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The best of times, the worst of times for psychiatric disease

Nature Neuroscience volume 15, pages 811–812 (2012)Cite this article

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As long-awaited advances in psychiatric genetics begin to materialize in force, promising to steer us safely to the best of times in psychiatric disease research, many pharmaceutical companies pull away from the challenge of drug development, threatening to bring us to the worst of times for the field. There is a real danger of missed opportunities and a sense of urgency for defining a clear path forward.

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Acknowledgements

Support from the US National Institutes of Health (grant 5R13MH091947 to M.K.) and the Martinos family is gratefully acknowledged.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Maria Karayiorgou

  2. The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    Jonathan Flint

  3. Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, and Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Joseph A Gogos

  4. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Robert C Malenka

  5. Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Rockefeller University, New York, New York, USA

    Cornelia I Bargmann

  6. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Biological Engineering, MIT Media Lab, McGovern Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Edward S Boyden

  7. Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Edward T Bullmore

  8. GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Unit Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Edward T Bullmore

  9. Yerkes National Primates Research Center and Department of Human Genetics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Anthony W Chan

  10. Emeritus Professor, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Michael Davis

  11. Department of Bioengineering, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Karl Deisseroth

  12. Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Ricardo E Dolmetch

  13. Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Ricardo E Dolmetch

  14. Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Kevin Eggan

  15. Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Scott C Fears & Nelson B Freimer

  16. Department of Neurology, Neurogenetics Program, Center for Autism Research and Treatment, Semel Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Daniel H Geschwind

  17. Department of Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Joshua Gordon

  18. Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Debbie A Nickerson

  19. Institute of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Brussels Medical School, Brussels, Belgium

    Pierre Vanderhaeghen

  20. Department of Neuroscience, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

    Richard Axel & Charles S Zuker

  21. Simons Foundation, Autism Research Initiative, New York, New York, USA

    Gerald D Fischbach

Authors
  1. Maria Karayiorgou
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  2. Jonathan Flint
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  3. Joseph A Gogos
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  4. Robert C Malenka
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Consortia

the Genetic and Neural Complexity in Psychiatry 2011 Working Group

  • Cornelia I Bargmann
  • , Edward S Boyden
  • , Edward T Bullmore
  • , Anthony W Chan
  • , Michael Davis
  • , Karl Deisseroth
  • , Ricardo E Dolmetch
  • , Kevin Eggan
  • , Scott C Fears
  • , Nelson B Freimer
  • , Daniel H Geschwind
  • , Joshua Gordon
  • , Debbie A Nickerson
  • , Pierre Vanderhaeghen
  • , Richard Axel
  • , Charles S Zuker
  •  & Gerald D Fischbach

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Karayiorgou.

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Competing interests

Edward Bullmore is employed half-time by University of Cambridge and half-time by GlaxoSmithKline and is a stockholder in GlaxoSmithKline.

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A complete list of authors and affiliations appears at the end of this paper.

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Cite this article

Karayiorgou, M., Flint, J., Gogos, J. et al. The best of times, the worst of times for psychiatric disease. Nat Neurosci 15, 811–812 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3115

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