The book reviews clinical trial methodology as it pertains to drug development in psychiatry. The reader will understand the process of drug development in psychiatry from discovery through marketing with the help of clinically relevant examples. The reader will appreciate the history of drug development in psychiatry dating back to the era of serendipitous discovery and culminating in an era of new and highly focused targets. Readers will understand how drug development in psychiatry has changed and adapted with the discovery of novel mechanism of action drugs. Novel drugs and disease targets have changed the way developers and regulatory agencies think about clinical trial methodology.

The book elucidates how biomarkers, genetics and advances in neuroscience and neuroimaging have influenced drug development approaches, which will ultimately change the practice of psychiatry. The book will be broken down into the following sections:

a.        Prior to the 1960s - Drug discovery by chance observation

b.       The last 50 years – refined targeting of CNS drugs without the discovery of mechanistically new drugs

c.       The future – the discovery and development of mechanistically new drugs. The examination of new targets, genetics and biomarkers.