SHOULD RATIONAL DRUG DEVELOPMENT IN PSYCHIATRY TARGET MORE THAN ONE MECHANISM OF ACTION IN A SINGLE-MOLECULE

Rational drug development has come to psychiatry. Both the promise and the challenge that comes with this fact are great. One issue raised i s whether to decide rationally to develop drugs with more than one mec hanism of action (MOA) to improve efficacy and/or tolerability. As wit h any issue in science, thinking and planning will only take one so fa r. After that, the dice must be rolled and the results assessed. Undou btedly, some drugs with dual or even more MOAs will prove to be desira ble and others not. The question is which ones.