Pharmaceutical company closes the neuroscience research facility one after another, the crisis facing the psychoactive drug industry

ByErich Ferdinand

The antidepressant that gained popularity as a medicine for miraclesProzacWas released in 1989 in the United States about 25 years, as of 2013 about 20% of Americans as a whole was prescribed by a doctorMedicines that act to change feelings and mental conditionsI am taking it.Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitorofZoloftYaLexaproAlthough drugs such as drugs are well known in the United States, side effects that occur by taking it every day are hardly understood. Despite the large number of voices worried about taking antidepressants and psychotropic drugs, sales of psychoactive medicines in 2010 recorded 70 billion dollars (about 6.9 trillion yen). A psychiatrist warns that psychiatric medicine is accepted by consumers and there seems to be no problem at first glance but "the psychiatric drug industry is facing a serious crisis," a psychiatrist warns.

A Dry Pipeline for Psychiatric Drugs - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/health/a-dry-pipeline-for-psychiatric-drugs.html

What Happened to Psychiatry's Magic Bullets?: The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/psychiatry-prozac-ssri-mental-health-theory-discredited.html

Richard Friedman, a psychiatrist at Cornell University, warns the psychoactive industry. According to Friedman, in the past few yearsPfizerYaSanofiAnd other major pharmaceutical companies have reduced the neuroscience laboratory or closed it completely, stopping ongoing clinical trials and new drug research. Despite being a rapidly growing market for the psychoactive industry, why is a major pharmaceutical company contracting facilities one after another? The cause seems to be able to be comfortable from the history of psychopharmacology.

ByArgonne National Laboratory

In 1949 a psychiatristJohn CaidMr"So depressionI discovered that lithium is effective to calm patients, "posted an article in a medical journal in Australia. Mr. Cade, who was in the process of experimenting on depression so far, discovered by chance that lithium is effective in alleviating the symptoms of depression so twenty years after its discovery, lithium is used in the treatment of depression so It began.

It is called the name of premature dementia in the 1940s and 1950s, and now it is said that the official name disease of schizophrenia is not clearly established treatment, and various treatment methods were mingled Thing. One of the many treatments that I had was "to cool with ice", and in some French hospitals treatment ice has run out, so nurses replace iceChlorpromazineThe patient was regained calm after administration to a patient with schizophrenia who was arrogantly rampant with a powerful sedative drug such as. After that, chlorpromazine was approved in 1952 as the first drug effective for schizophrenia.

By@ Doug 88888

In 1956, in SwitzerlandGeigyWas a doctor and a researcher of a mental hospitalRoland KuhnTo Mr.,AntihistaminemetImipramineI asked for field tests. If the sedation effect was recognized as a result of the examination, Geigy plans to enter the antipsychotic market. Contrary to the expectations of Geigy, in the test results imipramine has an excitement effect, and a patient with schizophrenia goes out of the hospital after administration of medicine, went to a nearby village and sang loudly that the song was singing loudly about. However, Mr. Kuhn says "If the symptoms of schizophrenia," an inexperienced state ", was resolved by imipramine, it would eliminate the depressed mood of depression?" He said that. After a while, imipramineTofuranirIt was sold as the first antidepressant drug in the world under the product name.

On the other hand, American researchers were also interested in antihistamines like Geigy. Chemist'sLeo · Stern turn backHe was trying to throw away the last sample of the compound which proved to be pharmacologically inactive, but he tried experimenting to completely end the test. As a result of the test, it was found from the last sample that the compound has muscle relaxation and sedation. The compound that was supposed to be treated as a failure in the initial test is later used for sleeping pills and anxiolytic drugsBenzodiazepineIt was that it was.

ByAussiegall

Psychotic drugs were discovered besides lithium, imipramine and benzodiazepine by 1960, but many of them were discovered from a certain incident by accident, so "Why is it effective for disease?It was lacking in the theory to explain. On the other hand, "mental disorder is an unstable state of neurotransmitter"Chemical imbalance"It is caused by the cause," the theory about diseases, not drugs, was announced in the 1950s.

In 1965, Mr. Joseph Schildkraut of the National Institute of Mental Health of the United States, in depression depression in the brainNoradrenalinAnd the antidepressant advocated the hypothesis that it has the effect of increasing it, and finally the theory to explain the question "Why is antidepressant drug effective for depression?" Was announced is.

ByPatrick Hoesly

However, after several years, the antidepressant is not noradrenaline in the brainSerotoninIt was found that the concentration of Schildkraut's hypothesis was wrong. there,SynapseSuch as Prozac and Zoloft that aim to improve depression symptoms by acting on the reabsorption of serotonin inSelective serotonin reuptake inhibitor(SSRIA new antidepressant drug was developed. When incorporating into marketing that this antidepressant is based on a plausible chemical basis of chemical imbalance, it was said that it sold the best among prescription drugs by the mid-1990s.

Although SSRI certainly has the effect of increasing the serotonin concentration, why SSRI has no effect on depression is unknown, since the basis of the fact that the decrease in serotonin is the cause of depression has not been shown in the first place It remains. As to overtake, the chemical imbalance theory which was regarded as the fundamental theory of depression was found to be inaccurate. What is clear from long-standing studies of depression and antidepressants is that the brain, which has more nerves than the number of stars in the Milky Way and is one of the most complex objects in the universe, has a hurdle for pharmaceutical It is only the fact that it passed.

ByEric

It is an indication that pharmaceutical companies are contracting and closing neuroscience research facilities one after another because they have lost faith in "chemical imbalance" that they have long believed and continued their research. Studies that have continued to believe in "chemical imbalances" which may not exist may also be wasteful. Mr. Friedman says, "It is very difficult for researchers to develop a completely new medicine that overturns the theory that was believed for thirty years, and it costs enormous expenses."