Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric illness that affects approximately 1% of the population worldwide and is associated with three broad clusters of symptoms that result in lifelong disability, including positive and negative symptoms and impairments in cognition.  Clinical available antipsychotics provide relief for the positive symptoms, but have little to no effect on the negative symptoms or cognitive deficits. Thus, there remains a tremendous unmet need to develop novel therapies to more effectively and safely address the complex symptoms of schizophrenia. While the etiology of schizophrenia is unknown, imbalances in several neurotransmitter systems have been implicated in the pathophysiology of this illness, including the dopaminergic, glutamatergic, and cholinergic systems. Here we will review emerging preclinical and clinical evidence for the potential role of four novel pharmacologic strategies for the treatment of schizophrenia, including mGluR2 positive allosteric modulators, alpha 7 nACh receptor partial agonists, and phosphodiesterase 2A  and 10A inhibitors.

Novel neuropharmacologic approaches for the treatment of schizophrenia

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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