Developing Drugs to Target Cognitive Deficits
Efforts are under way to attract drug company interest in developing medications to improve the cognitive functioning of patients with schizophrenia, the feature of the disease most strongly associated with functional outcome.
Stephen Marder, M.D., described several efforts in this area, including a program at the National Institute of Mental Health known as the Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS). These are the specific goals of MATRICS:
To catalyze regulatory acceptance of cognition in schizophrenia as a target for drug registration. | |||||
To promote development of novel compounds to enhance cognition in schizophrenia. | |||||
To leverage the drug industry's economic research power to focus on important but neglected clinical targets. | |||||
To identify lead compounds and, if deemed feasible, support human proof of concept trials for cognition in schizophrenia. | |||||
Marder also cited another NIMH-funded program called Treatment Units for Research on Neurocognition in Schizophrenia (TURNS). The TURNS program will provide an infrastructure for clinical studies of pharmacological agents for enhancing neurocognition in patients with schizophrenia.
Marder is the principal investigator in both of those programs. Information about them is posted online at<www.matrics.ucla.edu> and<www.turns.ucla.edu>.
