Schizophrenia Programs Reviewed by NeuroInvestment
Tuesday March 8, 9:00 am ET
RYE, NH--(MARKET WIRE)--Mar 8, 2005 -- NI Research today announced the release of the March issue of NeuroInvestment, reviewing the development of novel therapies for the treatment of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is the most devastating of all psychiatric illnesses: Just as Alzheimer's lyses memory, and ALS dissolves the body's musculature, schizophrenia erodes an individual's personality and prospects, generally beyond recognition or retrieval. The current armamentarium offers symptom-control as the best that can be hoped for, freeing most of these patients from the invisible warehousing of state mental hospitals, but leaving them on the fringe of society. Schizophrenic patients constitute the majority of patients living in group homes and supervised apartments, and they account for perhaps one-third of the ravaged, homeless denizens of shelters and underpasses in cities across America. At present, there is no cure in sight. The improvement in medication has not changed the proportion of schizophrenics who even maintain a steady job, about 10% -- about the same proportion as eventually commit suicide. With state hospitals closed for all but the most devastatingly afflicted, there is an underclass of the chronically mentally ill, most of whom are schizophrenic, who rely upon a fragile safety net of community mental health services, group residences, sheltered vocational settings, and family support, derailed from the mainstream.
But there is work in progress that could alter that bleak landscape. The fundamental paradigm regarding the symptoms of schizophrenia is being altered, and with it, the focus of therapeutic programs and experimentation. Cognitive symptoms: deficits in attention, memory, and organizational skills, are now receiving far more attention that they once did. Some propose that it is this cognitive deficit that is primary in schizophrenia, from which the symptoms of hallucinations and delusions then spring, as if they constitute a maladaptive attempt to fill the ideational vacuum left by thought disorder and dysfunction. The first generation of antipsychotic medications exclusively addressed hallucinations and delusions, while exacerbating the negative and cognitive symptoms that were seen as secondary. There is a sea change in terms of research emphasis, and NIMH has spotlighted (and funded) the identification of drugs that will ameliorate the cognitive symptoms of this disorder -- because even if they are not the wellspring from which positive symptoms emerge, they are a morass that prevent schizophrenic patients, with but rare exceptions, from living fully engaged and productive lives.
The March issue of NeuroInvestment summarizes the current treatment options, and then reviews current major themes in schizophrenia research; the contribution of genetic, environmental, and neurostructural defects to the disease. A wide range of therapeutics under development are assessed, with an emphasis upon those which may begin to remedy cognitive symptoms, including novel glutamatergic, nicotinic, and serotonergic strategies. Some of the programs included in this review are from Organon, Neuro3D, Cortex (AMEX:COR - News), Ovation, Acadia (NasdaqNM:ACAD - News). Prestwick, Avera, Lundbeck, Saegis, Memory (NasdaqNM:MEMY - News), Targacept, AGY, Psychiatric Genomics, DarPharma, Abbott, Vanda, and Alamo Pharmaceuticals.
The March issue also reports on developments in the CNS field, including the Tysabri situation, the failure of Axonyx's Phenserine Phase III trial, and Valeant's purchase of Xcel.
Recent issues of NI have reviewed neural cell therapy programs, ALS therapies and overviewed the CNS therapeutics sector in general. The forthcoming April issue will cover new treatments for spinal cord injury.
NeuroInvestment Subscription Rates:
Pharmaceutical: 3-month trial $350, 1 year $1250, 2 years $2280
Individual Investor: 3-month trial $150, 1 year $450, 2 years $800.
Outside the US/Canada add $40 per year for hardcopy airmail. For combined hardcopy and email delivery, add $50 per year
Information about NeuroInvestment's Institutional Edition is available on request.
NI Research is the leading publisher of independent research regarding the CNS therapeutics area. NI has published NeuroInvestment since 1995. NI Research also publishes the annual Private CNS Company Review, whose 2005 edition is scheduled for release in late March; and provides product licensing consultation and custom research for large and small pharmaceutical firms.
Contact:
Contact:
Dr. Harry M. Tracy
Phone: 603-379-8800
Fax: 603-964-7561
NI Research, P.O. Box 458
Rye, NH 03870
neuroinvestment.com
niresearch.com
neuroinv@neuroinv.com |
