There are myriad ways the mind and body can go wrong but schizophrenia is crueller than many others. 

While doctors have witnessed firsthand the numerous wonder drugs in recent times — precision medicines in oncology, for instance — drug treatments for schizophrenia have remained largely the same.

It has been 70 years since the last big thing: chlorpromazine hitting the market as the world’s first antipsychotic drug. 

Melbourne biochemist Professor Brian Dean remembers an older colleague likening it to the walls of a dam crashing down: “Suddenly clinicians were drowning in new ways of treating people.”