BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

Arrestin psychosis

November 10, 2011 8:00 AM UTC

Researchers from Duke University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have used the antipsychotic drug Abilify aripiprazole as a scaffold to design a new class of antipsychotic compounds that showed fewer side effects in mice.1 The researchers are currently negotiating a licensing deal for the compounds with an undisclosed pharma.

Antipsychotics typically exert their effects by either agonizing or antagonizing the dopamine D2 receptor on neurons, thus altering dopaminergic signaling in the brain and reducing symptoms in diseases such as schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder...