Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Schizophrenia drug says goodbye to dopamine

Nature Medicine volume 13, pages 1018–1019 (2007)Cite this article

A drug that activates glutamate receptors offers promise for a new class of anti-psychotic therapeutics and sheds light on the pathophysiology of this devastating disease (pages 1102–1107).

All psychiatric drugs in common use today are derivatives of treatments that were originally discovered by accident. None were developed based on a scientific understanding of the causes or pathophysiology of mental illness. The modern era of clinical psychopharmacology began over 50 years ago with the serendipitous observation by Henri Laborit, a French surgeon, that a new antihistamine called chlorpromazine had unusual tranquilizing effects which, he proposed, could treat psychosis without major sedation. Subsequent studies confirmed his suspicion and suggested that chlorpromazine's mechanism of action involved reducing dopamine neurotransmission1, particularly dopamine D2–receptor signaling, in the brain2. Many follow-up drugs with slight variations in pharmacologic properties and side-effect profiles have been marketed for the treatment of psychotic symptoms (for example, hallucinations and delusions), but all have been based on this antidopaminergic principle.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: The novel compound for treating schizophrenia described in the study by Patil et al. is a specific agonist of the so-called group II metabotropic glutamate receptors, mGlurR2 and mGluR3.

Katie Ris-Vicari

References

  1. Carlsson, A. & Lindquist, M. Acta Pharmacol. Toxicol. (Copenh.) 20, 140–144 (1963).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Creese, I., Burt, D.R. & Snyder, S.H. Science 192, 481–483 (1976).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Patil, S.T. et al. Nat. Med. 13, 1100–1105 (2007).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Anonymous. Nature 336, 95–96 (1998).

  5. Ross, C.A., Margolis, R.L., Reading, S.A., Pletnikov, M., & Coyle, J.T. Neuron 52, 139–153 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Harrison, P.J. & Weinberger, D.R. Mol. Psychiatry 10, 40–68 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Tan, W. et al. J. Biol. Chem. 282, 24343–24351 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Egan, M.F. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 12604–12609 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Aronica, E. et al. Eur. J. Neurosci. 17, 2106–2118 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Krystal, J.H. et al. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 51, 199–214 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Lieberman, J.A. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 353, 1209–1223 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Winterer, G. & Weinberger, D.R. Trends Neurosci. 27, 683–690 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Daniel R. Weinberger is at the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch, Intramural Research Program, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA. daniel.weinberger@mail.nih.gov,

    Daniel R Weinberger

Authors
  1. Daniel R Weinberger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Weinberger, D. Schizophrenia drug says goodbye to dopamine. Nat Med 13, 1018–1019 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0907-1018

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0907-1018

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing