Oiling the pipeline: the path from genomics to drug discovery for brain disease

The advent of genomic technologies has enabled the discovery of key processes involved in the pathogenesis of many disease states. The application of high-throughput transcriptional profiling methods holds promise for similar advances in neuroscience; however, particular considerations need to be addressed when initiating these studies in the context of CNS disorders. This review provides a comparison of current genomic technologies, highlighting specific challenges that arise in genomic analysis of brain function and disease, and describes how these approaches have been successfully applied to identify targets for therapeutic intervention.