The ketamine analogue methoxetamine generalizes to ketamine discriminative stimulus in rats

Methoxetamine (MXE) is a chemical analogue of ketamine. Originally proposed as a ketamine-like fast-acting antidepressant, owing to similar N-methyl-D-aspartate blocker properties, it is now scheduled for reports of hallucinations and psychosis similar to ketamine and lysergic acid. As little is known about the addictive properties of MXE, the aim of this study was to investigate the similarity between discriminative stimuli of MXE and ketamine, as well as to provide data and protocols that could be used in the future for the characterization of novel ketamine-like drugs. The paradigm used was a two-lever operant conditioning paradigm in which rats were trained to discriminate ketamine (7.5 mg/kg/ml, intraperitoneal) from vehicle. Generalization tests were performed with MXE (0.0625, 0.125, 0.25, 0.5, or 1.0). We also tested the N-methyl-D-aspartate channel blocker MK-801 (0.005-0.1), lysergic acid (0.025-0.30), a serotonergic drug that had similar hallucinogenic effects as ketamine and methamphetamine (0.15-0.60) a drug with no generalization with ketamine, injected intraperitoneally presession (mg/kg). MXE and MK-801 fully generalized to ketamine. Lysergic acid and methamphetamine partially substituted for the ketamine stimulus, although the highest lysergic acid dose showed a 77.7% generalization. The present findings suggest that investigation of 'ketamine-like compounds' should explore not only substances with chemical analogy and common molecular mechanisms with ketamine, but also with similar psychopharmacological effects.