A new drug being studied for Alzheimer's disease has a dual mechanism of action. It inhibits an enzyme that breaks down a critical chemical messenger in the brain called acetylcholine and acts on other key receptors in the brain to cause more of the chemical to be released. Not everyone believes the psychopharmacology revolution has arrived. People said new antidepressives were in the pipeline, but we were wondering where all these new medications were. He noted that improved medications are needed to treat dissociative disorders and somatic symptoms experienced by patients with anxiety disorders.
Many drugs are in the pipeline but few have broken out in the marketplace.
Advances have been incremental, on the edge of what we had before. Our hope is that the new generation of medicines will be major steps forward. Some pharmaceutical company executives agree that even bigger breakthroughs are needed. In the future, we will be introducing more compounds belonging to entirely new classes of drugs. But research can be time-consuming and expensive.