Magic shotgun methods for developing drugs for CNS disorders

Extract: Development of novel therapeutic entities with which to treat disorders of the central nervous system (CNS) that are both more effective and more specific, poses significant challenges to the drug discovery industry. The normal focus of drug research is the search for a "magic bullet," which acts on a specific protein (or receptor), ideally with no other interactions with other proteins. These are termed "clean" drugs, as they have a single action with few side effects. However, most common CNS disorders are highly polygenic in nature, i.e., they are controlled by complex interactions between numerous gene products. As such, these conditions do not exhibit the single gene defect basis that is so attractive for the development of highly-specific drugs largely free of major undesirable side effects ("the magic bullet"). Secondly, the exact nature of the interactions that occur between the numerous gene products typically involved in CNS disorders remain elusive, and the biological mechanisms underlying mental illnesses are poorly understood.