Despite the impact on society of these diseases and the overwhelming need for treatments, an increasing number of pharmaceutical companies are abandoning their development of drugs that target neurological and psychological diseases. Some of the difficulties that these drugs face are due in part to the complexity of the diseases being targeted coupled with clinical trials that include difficult to define end-points for patient improvement. Biomarkers, with many wide applications, may pose a solution to some of these problems.
Discussion question: How helpful do you think biomarkers can be in the success of future neuropsychiatric drug development; either in patient selection, early detection, or determining the efficacy of these medicines? What is most important for these neuropsychiatric drugs to succeed?