New medications for treatment-resistant depression: a brief review of recent developments

Abstract

There is a great unmet need for new medications with novel mechanisms of action that can effectively treat patients who do not benefit from standard antidepressant therapies. After a period in which it seemed as if the pharmaceutical pipeline for new antidepressants was going dry, the past decade has witnessed renewed interest, beginning with discovery of the antidepressant effects of ketamine. This article briefly highlights more recent research on ketamine and other investigational antidepressants.

Keywords: ALKS-5461; esketamine; investigational antidepressants; ketamine; rapastinel; therapies; treatment-resistant depression.