“Oh my god, they’ll be able to use this to create a race of fearless soldiers,” was U of T Professor David Lovejoy’s first thought after making his landmark discovery.
Three years ago Lovejoy and his colleagues discovered a family of hormones that, based on studies in rodents, seem to reduce fear. To discover a new hormone is an extremely rare feat. To discover an entirely new family of hormones is even less common.
A year ago Lovejoy created a startup company to do further research into these new hormones, and he has recently acquired funding for his company. He is still in the process of finalizing the contracts, so at the moment all he can say is that “the funding is coming from a group of private American investors, a lot of whom have invested because they have an interest in depression and bipolar disorder.” The identities of the investors should become known to the general public within the next few weeks.
Lovejoy is hoping to use his group of hormones, called “teneurin C terminal associated peptides,” or TCAPs for short, to treat human emotional problems like manic depression. But he realizes that his hormones could be used for less altruistic purposes, perhaps even by military forces.
“No matter what you discover, an evil mind can turn it to something bad,” he said. “This is the problem with discovery.”
