Building bridges along the drug discovery pipeline #1

9 November 2021

This is the first of a collaborative 5-part webinar series between the British Neuroscience Association and the Psychiatry Consortium.

Psychiatric drug discovery must be a truly collaborative process if it is to be successful. All too often industry and academia work exclusively, developing transformative work in isolation of each other and only building alliances at a later stage when necessary. Cross-disciplinary partnerships cultivated earlier in the process can take a project in a whole new direction, for the benefit of those working on the science, for the patient and the investor.

We believe the challenges facing psychiatric research require the insights and involvement of individuals across all aspects of the research landscape. People with lived experience of mental health, academic researchers, clinicians, regulators, and industry scientists to name a few, must all be involved in the development of solutions if we are to overcome the hurdles to psychiatric drug development.

This series of webinars will highlight the challenges and opportunities at key stages in the translational pipeline, from identifying the unmet patient need, undertaking the basic research required to understand the disease biology to develop novel treatments. At each stage, we will hear from experts who will give their perspectives on what we can do to support each other along this process.