The Potential of Cerebrolysin in the Treatment of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia and psychosis are psychiatric condition whose neural mechanisms are yet incompletely known, and for which pharmacological treatment is too often ineffective in a growing clinical cohort. Recently, dendritic morphological changes in arborization and dendritic spine density in limbic regions has been reported in postmortem tissue from schizophrenic patients and in animal models of schizophrenia, suggesting that the use of medication improving synaptogenesis may be beneficial as additional treatment of psychotic patients. Cerebrolysin (Cbl) is a drug available for clinical with active neuropeptides fragments that mimics the action of endogenous neurotrophic factors such as BDNF, GDNF, CNTF and NGF, which improves the integrity of the neuronal circuits as well as cognitive and behavioral performance by exerting a neuroprotective effect and promoting the generation of new functional synapses. Recent work from our laboratory has shown that Cbl ameliorates synaptic and dendritic pathology in animal models of schizophrenia by increasing synaptic density and restoring neuronal cytoarchitecture. This neuroprotective effect improves the integrity of the neuronal circuits and improves cognitive and behavioral performance. Importantly, Cbl treatment seems to be safe when used in combination with neuroleptics such as risperidone. The present article analyzes the potential of Cbl in the treatment of neurodevelopmental disease, and reviews the current literature on the effects of Cbl in in vivo animal models of neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia.