We need clear voice of reason from the scientific community and a sensible balanced view of risks/benefits from those in government scientific advisory committees to defend the whole field of drug innovation in the face of media pressure to ban every new drug. David Nutt was a member of the ACMD, the government’s

advisory committee on drugs, from 2000 to 2009. He is now chair of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs http://www.drugscience.org.uk

For more than 50 years, the only effective antipsychotic drugs available have been dopamine Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical D2 receptor antagonists [Kapur and Mamo, 2003], with their clinical potency directly corresponding to their affinity at D2 receptors [Seeman and Lee, 1975]. Despite leading to at least a partial clinical response in around two thirds of patients with schizophrenia, the other third of patients will fail to respond

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to D2 antagonists [Stone et al. 2010b]. Furthermore, although positive symptoms generally show a CP-868596 mw reasonable response to these drugs, there frequently remains a core of negative symptoms that are refractory to antipsychotic treatment [Javitt, 2001; Buchanan et al. 1998; Tamminga Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical et al. 1998]. All currently available antipsychotic drugs have significant, and sometimes potentially life-threatening, side effects, which may lead to discontinuation of the treatment. Although the second generation of antipsychotic drugs have a lower incidence of extrapyramidal side effects, they are associated with other debilitating effects such as impaired glucose tolerance and weight gain, which

can have significant health Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical consequences. Thus, there has been a great deal of interest in developing new targets for pharmacological treatment in schizophrenia: drugs which might have fewer side effects and/or lead to response in patients who do not respond fully to currently available drugs [Stone et al. 2010b]. So far, the only major advance in drug treatments for schizophrenia has been the discovery of clozapine, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical which has been consistently shown to have superior efficacy in patients unresponsive to other antipsychotic drugs [McEvoy et al. 2006; Kane et al. 1988]. No other agent developed since clozapine has shown equivalent Sodium butyrate efficacy, and improvements over first-generation antipsychotic drugs have been incremental at best. Part of the reason for this lack of rapid progress may be due to the fact that drug development in schizophrenia has primarily focused on the strategy of developing new drugs that act on the dopamine system rather than developing compounds for other targets. Glutamatergic neurotransmission Glutamate is the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain. Between 60% and 80% of total brain metabolic activity in the nonstimulated cerebral cortex is utilized by glutamatergic neurones, with the remainder being used by GABAergic neurones and glial cells.