PCP: from pharmacology to modelling schizophrenia

Phencyclidine has attracted the attention of neuroscientists for many years because of its ability to produce, in humans, a range of symptoms remarkably similar to those of patients suffering from schizophrenia. The main action of phencyclidine is as a non-competitive antagonist of the NMDA class of glutamate receptor. In the past few years, dramatic advances have been made in our understanding of the neuroanatomical and pathological basis of schizophrenia. In turn, these have allowed assessment of the ability of phencyclidine to produce equivalent changes in the rodent CNS. It has now become clear that chronic intermittent low doses of phencyclidine produce a pattern of metabolic and neurochemical changes in the rodent brain that mirror those observed in the brains of schizophrenic patients with impressive precision. This should be of enormous benefit in the search for new anti-psychotic drugs with improved efficacy against the full range of schizophrenic symptoms.