Psychiatry has been held back by our limited translational pipeline. Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod's discovery in 1961 of monoamine reuptake by pre-synaptic neurons still forms the basis of most commonly prescribed types of antidepressants treatment. Likewise, dopamine receptor antagonists are widely used to treat schizophrenia. Pierre Deniker and Jean Delay conducted a clinical trial at the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center in Paris in which they treated 38 psychotic patients with daily injections of chlorpromazine, a dopamine receptor antagonist, without the use of other sedating agents. The response was dramatic; treatment with chlorpromazine went beyond simple sedation with patients showing improvements in thinking and emotional behavior. That was first reported in 1952
