Novel therapeutic targets in neuropsychiatric disorders: the neuroepigenome

The neuroepigenome, i.e., the epigenome of the nervous system, has become interesting for therapeutics in the last years due to widespread availability of dedicated drugs. A pivotal role for neuroepigenetics is certainly implied, both in physiology and pathology, by the highly dynamic structural and functional rearrangements that constantly occur into the nervous system, globally known as plasticity. Moreover, the idea that the pathophysiology of several neuropsychiatric disorders might involve epigenetic mechanisms is increasingly taking place due to accumulating experimental data and by the evidence of a synergistic interaction between genes and environment beneath most sporadic forms of these diseases. In this paper we will review the available evidence on the use of epigenome-modifying drugs in the field of neuropsychiatry, shortly describing for each disease the underlying assumptions of an epigenetic dysregulation. © 2014 Bentham Science Publishers.