Yasmin Hurd, PhD: Asking the Questions No One Was Asking
A couple of decades ago, most people familiar with cannabis called it marijuana—and had probably never heard of cannabidiol (also known as CBD), one of its components.
Today, many people have heard about CBD and its potential therapeutic uses thanks to the work of Yasmin Hurd, PhD, Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and Director of the Addiction Institute of Mount Sinai, who pioneered research into the compound, cannabis more generally, and their various interactions with substance-use disorders.
“I believe I had been asking questions that no one was asking at the time,” said Dr. Hurd. Her work helped her get elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in May. She is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Hurd’s research focuses on the neurobiology of drug addiction and various psychiatric disorders, spanning both basic science research and translational work in humans. Having evidence in both non-clinical and clinical settings has helped the research be applicable in guiding treatment and health policy, she said.
“Producing research that actually has impact to our society was important to me,” Dr. Hurd said. Through her work in studying molecular impacts of exposure to substances from prenatally to adulthood, including pioneering studies of the human brain, she discovered milestones about the developmental and transgenerational effects of exposure to cannabis, and also its therapeutic potential for treating other forms of addiction, such as with opioids.
“At the time no one knew what cannabidiol was, and today you can even see it being added to coffee in coffee shops,” she said with a laugh.
Dr. Hurd was elected to the National Academy of Sciences along with Helen Mayberg, MD, founding Director of the Nash Family Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics at Mount Sinai. Read more about Dr. Mayberg’s achievements here.
The Potential of a Limitless Environment
More than a decade ago, in the field of medicine, marijuana was still seen as having limited evidence for being a treatment for any condition and many thought that it was a benign drug without long-term impact on the brain. “My research into the developmental effects of cannabis as well as potential therapeutic aspects of cannabidiol made people take another look at cannabis and have shaped the questions people are asking today,” she said.
Being able to ask the questions that no one was asking requires the combination of the researcher’s driving instinct and institutional support. “I think Mount Sinai helped me to not only ask, but to answer those questions,” Dr. Hurd said.
“Physicians had always focused on treating the adult patient in front of them, but the thinking about what had brought them there in the first place was unaddressed,” she said. As she studied adults with substance-use disorders, she found many had drug exposures early in life, and sought to understand whether those early exposures were linked to psychiatric illnesses later on as adults.
Dr. Hurd recalled that when she joined Mount Sinai in 2006, she pitched ideas about advancing her preclinical work into humans to Dennis Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of Icahn Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs of the Mount Sinai Health System. She had begun to study how cannabidiol worked in animal models but had not yet investigated it in live human beings. “Dean Charney said, ‘You could absolutely do that here,’ and just knowing that was possible enabled me to run clinical trials.”
“Early in my career, I never thought that my research would evolve the way it has,” Dr. Hurd said. “Instead of being theoretical about translation, I actually got to study it in humans.”
“The whole thing about being in an environment where there are no limitations placed on you is that it becomes dependent on your drive, on the questions you want to ask,” Dr. Hurd said. “I remember going away from that meeting feeling happy, thinking, ‘Whoa, there are no limits. What do I really want to do now?’”
Even today, that is a question Dr. Hurd asks herself. A constant in her research is for her work to always reveal something relevant to the human condition. As she advanced her work in addiction, she has come to understand that addiction is more a disorder of epigenetics, in contrast to a disease of genetic inheritance.
“Our next phase, especially in medication development, is to see if we can leverage the knowledge about epigenetic dysregulation to develop targeted interventions to reverse addiction,” Dr. Hurd said.
Addressing the Future of Addiction Research
Epigenetic changes are reversible, and this gives rise to hope that addiction ultimately can be, too. “When I started in this field, there was the pervasive stigma of the common phrase ‘Once an addict, always an addict,’” she said. “After studying this for such a long time, I know it’s not true. The effects may be long-lasting, but they are not locked for perpetuity.”
The road ahead will be challenging. Some challenges are merely logistical, such as space issues for animal and clinical research. Others are more systemic. “Those problems I face today remain the same I had at the start of my career,” Dr. Hurd said. “Getting grant money is still challenging, especially for high-risk projects. Stigma still surrounds addiction, even within science.”
Addressing the stigma will help with securing funding. They’re linked, Dr. Hurd said. “But with good support, I believe I’ll get there.”
A closer look at Dr. Hurd’s work
Dr. Eric Nestler
Eric Nestler, MD, PhD, Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, Director of The Friedman Brain Institute, Dean for Academic Affairs of Icahn Mount Sinai, and Chief Scientific Officer for the Mount Sinai Health System, discusses how Dr. Hurd’s work, which comes from asking basic questions, can translate into helping patients.
“Yasmin has always put a premium on mining the results of her work in rats to devise a new understanding for how substances affect humans and also to develop new treatments,” Dr. Nestler said.
Membership of the National Academy of Sciences—considered one of the highest honors for a scientist—comes through election by existing members only. Candidates’ entire bodies of work and contributions to the field are considered as part of the nomination process and their entries are voted on in April each year, with a maximum of 120 U.S. citizens and 30 non-citizens elected annually, according to NAS. There are currently approximately 2,400 U.S. members and 500 international members, of whom 190 have received Nobel prizes. Mount Sinai has six current faculty in the prestigious organization.
Her recent work on epigenetic changes that marijuana causes in the brain and that can be passed across subsequent generations has considerable importance to society, Dr. Nestler said. That paper on epigenetic changes, published in 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, discussed how children from mothers who used cannabis during pregnancy showed higher anxiety, aggression, hyperactivity, and levels of the stress hormone cortisol, compared to children of non-cannabis users.
“As marijuana is increasingly legalized, many people think of marijuana as being extremely safe,” Dr. Nestler said. “Yasmin has shown clearly that it may not be so safe, especially in pregnant women.”
Dr. Hurd’s research on the intersection of cannabinoids and addiction has significant impact too, Dr. Nestler said. Notable publications include her paper, published 2017 in Trends in Neurosciences, that laid out animal model evidence of cannabidiol, a non-high-producing compound derived from cannabis, as a treatment for opioid addiction because it lowers the reward for opioid use.
“That led her to launch a clinical trial that is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse,” Dr. Nestler said, referring to the agency that’s part of the National Institutes of Health. “This is a major milestone for Dr. Hurd’s research program and for the field at large.”