The rapid antidepressant and anxiolytic-like effects of YY-21 involve enhancement of excitatory synaptic transmission via activation of mTOR signaling in the mPFC

Although antidepressants have been widely prescribed to treat patients with major depressive disease (MDD), there is little disagreement over the need for improved antidepressant therapeutics as the typical treatments have a slow therapeutic onset and moderate efficacy. In the present study, we assessed a novel compound, YY-21, from timosaponin B-III derived from sarsasapogenin of Anemarrhenae Rhizoma. From the initial results, we found that YY-21 obviously increased presynaptic glutamate release and enhanced long-term synaptic activity within 10 min as determined by excitatory postsynaptic current (EPSC) and field excitatory postsynaptic potential (fEPSP) in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) slices, respectively. YY-21 demonstrated anxiolytic-like effects following acute administration in naïve animals and reversed the depressive-like and anxiety phenotypes induced by chronic unpredictable mild stress (CMS) with a relatively fast therapeutic onset. Furthermore, analysis of intracellular signaling pathways showed that YY-21 normalized the CMS-induced low protein levels of GluN2B, p-mTOR, synaptic-related proteins, such as BDNF, PSD-95 and GluA1. Pre-application of the mTOR-selective inhibitor rapamycin blocked YY-21-induced long-term synaptic enhancement. These findings suggest that the activation of BDNF-dependent mTOR signaling, which produces a rapid increase in the postsynaptic protein PSD-95 and GluA1 and further triggers the long-term enhancement of synaptic neurotransmission, may be the mechanism underlying the rapid antidepressant and anxiolytic effects induced by YY-21.