From a fascinating post on the latest attempts to make a drug to treat schizophrenia…..

Now, there’s been a lot of argument about whether the current generation of antipsychotic drugs is really better than the older ones. But I believe that they’re all supposed to come in better than a placebo. As Lilly points out, though, “inconclusive trials are common in neuroscience”, and they’re going to run another one and hope that the patients don’t all start improving again on powdered sucrose or whatever the placebo was. But this is especially surprising (and disappointing) because an earlier Phase II trial, run in a very similar design to the latest one, showed the compound working very well indeed. How do you go from such impressive results to no better than placebo in the same sort of trial design? Easy – just make sure that you’re developing a drug for schizophrenia. Or depression. Or chronic pain, or Alzheimer’s. Stick with the central nervous system, and your drug discovery career will never be boring.