No New Meds
With drug firms in retreat, the pipeline for new psychiatric medications dries up
Psychiatry seemed poised on the edge of a breakthrough. In early 2011, after decades of no radically new drugs, a fundamentally different schizophrenia treatment promised relief from the psychotic hallucinations and delusions plaguing people with the disease. The new compound, devised by chemists at Eli Lilly and Co., hit a target in the brain that older medicines had ignored.
All signs pointed to success. In mice, a similar molecule could block the schizophrenia-like effects of PCP. In people the new drug, LY2140023, appeared to curb psychotic behavior with few side effects, small pilot studies showed. In March 2011, Lilly began enrolling 1,100 people in a definitive Phase III clinical trial, the final test designed to show conclusively that the new compound worked.