Looking backwards: a possible new path for drug discovery in psychopharmacology.
The history of psychopharmacology is littered with type II errors--the rejection of effective compounds in the specious belief that they were inefficacious because they had failed to beat placebo in a controlled trial. Revisiting some of these drugs to establish their receptor profile, and then determining what patentable compounds now on the shelf match that profile, might represent a possible future pathway to drug discovery. This article looks at the special circumstances in which numerous potentially effective drugs were withdrawn in the United States.
Shorter
Edward
E
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 88 College Street, Toronto, M5G 1LY Canada. eshorter@sympatico.ca
D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004345:Drug Industry / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D011600:Psychopharmacology; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014481:United States
D011619:Psychotropic Drugs