Journal
CURRENT PHARMACEUTICAL DESIGN
Volume 22, Issue 14, Pages 2117-2123Publisher
BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBL LTD
DOI: 10.2174/1381612822666160127113912
Keywords
Biomarkers; functional magnetic resonance imaging; fMRI; nicotine; alpha7 nicotinic receptor; functional connectivity; SPEM
Categories
Funding
- Veterans Administration Biomedical Laboratory and Clinical Science Research and Development Service
- National Institutes of Health [R01MH102224, R01DK103691, K01DK100445]
- Brain and Behavior Research Foundation
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Many of the most debilitating symptoms for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia remain poorly treated. As such, the development of novel treatments is urgently needed. Unfortunately, the costs associated with high failure rates for investigational compounds as they enter clinical trials has led to pharmaceutical companies downsizing or eliminating research programs needed to develop these drugs. One way of increasing the probability of success for investigational compounds is to incorporate alternative methods of identifying biological targets in order to more effectively screen new drugs. A promising method of accomplishing this goal for psychiatric drugs is to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). fMRI investigates neural circuits, shedding light on the biology that generates symptoms such as hallucinations. Once identified, relevant neural circuits can be targeted with pharmacologic interventions and the response to these drugs measured with fMRI. This review describes the early use of fMRI in this context, and discusses the alpha7 nicotinic receptor agonist 3-(2,4-dimethoxybenzylidene) anabaseine (DMXB-A), as an example of the potential value of fMRI for psychiatric drug development.
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