LSD
Targets in the model
23
each with a measured Kᵢ
A one-compartment model of what LSD might do over time, at a dose and by a route you choose. The affinities driving the occupancy calculation are measured and this archive holds them; the pharmacokinetics are mostly estimated, and the table at the foot of the page says which is which. The measured dossier · method
The input
First-order gastrointestinal absorption with a rate constant giving a peak near one hour, and a bioavailability reduced by first-pass metabolism. Both are class placeholders; where a compound has a published oral F it overrides this. Bioavailability for this route is 0.3 and the absorption rate constant 1.2 h⁻¹, both properties of the route rather than of LSD.
Modelled concentration
3 h 36 min
One compartment with first-order absorption. It cannot show a distribution phase, so the first minutes after an intravenous dose are the least trustworthy part of the curve. Peak effect-site concentration is 0.55 nM.
Reported milestones
1 Peak plasma LSD at 1.40 h
Times at which a named human study recorded an effect. These are observations, not model output: they stay where the study put them however you change the settings, so where a marker and the curve disagree, the curve is what is wrong. Each one names its study and what was read to confirm it, including how the study was designed. Except where a marker states its own dose, all of them were measured at 100 µg LSD base, oral.
- 1
Peak plasma LSD1.40 h(30 min–3.50 h)physiological
Peak plasma concentration of 2.1 ng/mL (range 1.1-3.6) reached at a median 1.4 h, range 0.5-3.5 h. Plasma elimination half-life 3.5 h.
Ley L et al., Neuropsychopharmacology 2023 — Stated in the Results, 'Plasma drug concentrations'.
- 2
Effects over8.20 hmental
Mean total duration of acute subjective effects 8.2 h, significantly longer than psilocybin and significantly shorter than 500 mg mescaline.
Ley L et al., Neuropsychopharmacology 2023 — Duration means from the abstract and Results. At this dose the authors also record a trend toward a larger heart-rate rise than psilocybin, which they do not time.
Model landmarks
These are not observations. Each one is a feature of the curve above, read off the figure and moving with it whenever you change a parameter.
Dose given0
The model starts here.
Peak plasma1 h 50 min
Modelled maximum of 3.11 nM total plasma concentration.
Peak effect site3 h 9 min
Modelled maximum of 0.549 nM at the effect site — the concentration the occupancy below is computed from.
Modelled receptor occupancy at 3 h 36 min
O = C/(C+Kᵢ) at the effect-site concentration above. The Kᵢ is measured and this archive holds it; the C is modelled. Equilibrium is assumed at every instant, with no receptor reserve, no active metabolite and no tolerance.
- 5-HT218%
- 5-HT1A64%
- 5-HT758%
- 5-HT2A53%
- 5-HT2B36%
- 5-HT2C33%
- 5-HT630%
- 5-HT5B14%
- 5-HT1B12%
- 5-HT1D8%
- 5-HT5A6%
- Alpha2A4%
- D23%
- D32%
The archive holds measurements of this pair that disagree by more than a hundredfold, so the single number beside it is not settled. The strongest is shown — in this archive the strongest measurement is usually the best one rather than an outlier, because weak values are disproportionately old tissue preparations — but the range is what the sources actually support: 5-HT7 0.40–200 nM across 15; 5-HT2A 0.47–5,300 nM across 40.
This archive holds no pChEMBL value for the pair, and holds one for others of this compound — so the absence is ChEMBL’s, not a gap in the harvest. ChEMBL withholds a pChEMBL where the activity is not a comparable, meaningful result: an inexact relation, an unrecognised type, or a screen the depositor marked inactive. The concentration is shown because it is what the archive holds, and it is ranked below everything vouched for because it is not evidence of binding. Ketamine against the APE1 endonuclease is the example that earned this footnote: ChEMBL records that screen as inactive, and read as an affinity it made a DNA-repair enzyme ketamine’s tightest binder by two orders of magnitude.
Modelled regional engagement
Occupancy at each target multiplied by that target’s transcript level in the region, summed. This product is the model speaking. A dossier’s Systems plate deliberately refuses to compute it, because there it would read as a finding; here it is an output with its assumptions on the page. Transcript is not receptor density, and a region shaded here is a region where the model says binding could occur, not one shown to be affected.
And nothing checks it. The concentration plot above carries reported milestones because human studies state times; this figure has no counterpart. The human imaging work this archive cites reports connectivity change across a cortical parcellation, which is a different quantity in a different set of regions — the atlas holds the cortex as one — so it can neither confirm nor contradict the shading here, and translating it onto these thirteen regions would assert a correspondence nobody has published.
Brain
Body
Shading is on a fixed scale — the strongest engagement reached anywhere during the whole run — so the figures dim as the compound clears instead of renormalising to whatever the current instant happens to hold. Outlines from the EMBL-EBI Anatomogram, the same plates the dossiers use.
Brain regions
- basal ganglia
- cerebral cortex
- hypothalamus
- hippocampal formation
- amygdala
- midbrain
- pituitary gland
- spinal cord
- retina
- cerebellum
Peripheral & autonomic
- smooth muscle
- adrenal gland
- colon
- small intestine
- urinary bladder
- stomach 1
- heart muscle
- duodenum
- thyroid gland
- liver
- kidney
- pancreas
Parameters
The whole model is these five numbers plus the route. Each says whether anyone measured it for LSD. Edit any of them; nothing here is written back to the archive.
How long the plasma concentration takes to halve once absorption is over.
Class prior adjusted to the commonly reported range of roughly 3-5 h. This archive holds no LSD half-life row.
Apparent volume the dose would occupy at the plasma concentration. Large means the compound leaves the blood for tissue.
Reported to distribute far less than most compounds here, close to plasma volume plus interstitial fluid.
The share of plasma drug not bound to protein. Only unbound drug crosses into the brain.
Class prior reduced; LSD is substantially protein-bound.
Unbound brain concentration divided by unbound plasma. Below 1 implies active efflux; 1 is passive equilibration.
Passive equilibration assumed.
How fast the receptor compartment follows plasma. Small values put the peak effect long after the peak concentration.
Lowered well below the prior: LSD's subjective peak lags its plasma peak by hours, which is the largest effect-site delay of any compound here.