Can pharmaco-electroencephalography help improve survival of central nervous system drugs in early clinical development?

Pharmaco-electroencephalography has significant yet unrealised promise as a translatable intermediate biomarker of central pharmacodynamic activity that could help reduce Phase 2 attrition in the development of central nervous system drugs. In an effort to understand its true potential, a framework for decision-making was proposed and the utility of pharmaco-electroencephalography was assessed through several case studies. A key finding was that lack of standardisation reduces the value of data pooling and meta-analyses and renders assessment of translatability difficult, limiting utility in all but simple cases. Pre-competitive collaboration is essential both to improving understanding of translation and developing modern signal processing techniques.