CHAPTER 8 - Developing New Drugs for Schizophrenia: From Animals to the Clinic

Abstract

Schizophrenia is typically a lifelong and often devastating, but relatively common (life-time risk of 1%), psychiatric disorder, which often begins in late adolescence or early adulthood. This chapter reviews the current drug treatments for schizophrenia, the outstanding unmet needs for patients, the current understanding of the neurobiology of schizophrenia, and strategies for drug discovery. It focuses particularly on the development of appropriate animal models and translational approaches to aid in the understanding of the neurobiology of schizophrenia and to investigate the potential efficacy of novel pharmacological approaches. It discusses the challenges in drug discovery from both a preclinical and clinical perspective and examines the exciting advances in the understanding of this disorder and the various Academic/Government/Industry initiatives that are likely to make a major impact upon drug discovery in this area. It also considers some approaches that exemplify novel strategies for drug discovery or clinical investigation that promise significant advances in this field. The collaborative spirit needs to continue to focus the attention upon approaches that may improve the treatment of this debilitating and multi-syndromal disease.