Countering core and co-morbid symptoms of affective disorders: Complementary multi-target strategies

Major depression is a common and debilitating disorder for which current therapy is inadequate. Recent years have witnessed a preoccupation with highly-selective, rationally-discovered drugs acting at novel targets. However, more effective and rapidly-active agents active against both core and co-morbid symptoms of depression are more likely to emerge from multi-target drug discovery programmes: that is, the integration within a single molecule of complementary monoaminergic and/or non-monoaminergic mechanisms of activity.

Section editors:David Sibley – National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USAC. Anthony Altar – Psychiatric Genomics, Gaithersburg, USATheresa Branchek – Lundbeck Research, Paramus, USA