Underlying Molecular Mechanisms in Psychiatric Disorders and Potential Therapeutic Strategies

Psychiatric disorders like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, ADHD, and PTSD mainly represent neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, noradrenaline, acetylcholine, glutamate, and GABA imbalance. In addition, these disorders have also been reported to represent other detrimental features like oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, neuroinflammation, insulin resistance, apoptosis, autophagy, etc., which wreak havoc in certain brain regions to cause specific diseases.

Moreover, these phenomena are regulated by several underlying mechanisms like Nrf2/HO1, cytokines like interleukins, TNF-alpha, etc. PI3K/Akt/GSK-3B, mTOR, etc. Genes like BDNF, COMT, FKB5, GRIN2A, AKAP11, SRRM2, PCLO, FRMPD4, YTHDF, FOXP1/2, DARPP32, apoptotic and antiapoptotic factors like BAX/Bcl2, caspases, also play significant roles. In this regard, pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics also come into play, where genetic variation defines the drug actions in different psychiatric disorders. Here, the epigenetic and genetic pathways play a role in various psychiatric differences in their response to drugs and medications, further influencing their pharmacokinetic properties, like drug metabolism and disposition.

Hence, targeting the specific pathways to combat the disease pathology at the molecular, epigenetic, and gene levels can provide a novel direction in therapeutic interventions in psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, this will decide the various doses, dosage regimens, dosage forms, etc., and their actions in clinical settings based on differences in age, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. Therefore, this special issue solicits articles on novel pharmacological targets and drug discovery in various psychiatric disorders due to limited concrete treatment options, in ways that most of the existing drugs only provide symptomatic relief without halting the disease progression. Other limitations are the adverse effects and lower efficacy of the current treatments. This can potentially be resolved by selectively targeting the molecules and genes responsible for neuropathology without interfering with the other signaling pathways.

The scope of the research topic includes novel pharmacological interventions targeting specific molecular and genetic pathways that could reverse or attenuate neuropathology associated with psychiatric disorders. The articles based on pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics are highly desired. In silico, in vitro, and in vivo-based articles are welcome. The robust preclinical reports possessing translation to the clinical level will be preferred. Merely research on drug extraction, synthesis, and pharmacokinetic properties without pharmacological aspects will be considered out of scope.

Please note: If patient data are analyzed, a comprehensive description of the patients, including sex, age, diagnostic criteria, inclusion and exclusion criteria, disease stage, therapy received, comorbidities, as well as additional clinical information and assessment of clinical response/effects should be included. If genetic, proteomics, metabolomics, or other omics data are analyzed, a comprehensive description of the methods and the rationale for selecting the specific data studied should be provided. Studies related to natural compounds, herbal extracts, or traditional medicine products are outside the scope of this Research Topic and should instead be submitted to the specialty section of Ethnopharmacology. Studies solely based on the analysis of public databases or published evidence, with no further experimental insights or insufficient experimental validation, will not be included in this Research Topic.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Molecular mechanisms, Pharmacological targets, Therapeutic interventions, psychiatric disorders

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.