cells; C-6 cells; SchizophreniaSchizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric illness with two major types of symptoms-positive or psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, and negative or deficit symptoms, such as amotivation, apathy, and asociality. Approximately 1% of the population suffers from schizophrenia (Kaplan and Sadock 1988). The serendipitous discovery of chlorpromazine four decades ago not only provided the first efficacious therapeutic intervention, but also opened horizons into research about the etiology and therapy of this disease. It was soon hypothesized that chlorpromazine and similar drugs worked by being pharmacological antagonists of the neurotransmitter dopamine (Seeman et al. 1976;Creese et al. 1976), a hypothesis that ultimately provided the foundation for the commonly accepted division of dopamine receptors into two classes (Garau et al. 1978), now often called D 1 and D 2 (Kebabian and Calne 1979).During the past decade, molecular cloning studies have resulted in the identification of several genes coding for dopamine receptors. There now are at least two From the Departments of Pharmacology (CP, RBM) and Psychiatry (CPL, RBM), and Medicinal Chemistry (RBM), Curricula in Toxicology (CPL, RBM), and Neurobiology (MML, RBM), UNC Neuroscience Center (CPL, CP, MML, RBM), University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Molecular Neuropharmacology Section (CM, DJ, JAS, AMG, DRS), National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, Maryland.Address correspondence to: Dr. Cindy Lawler, CB #7250; UNC Neuroscience Center, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7250. Received April 17, 1998; revised August 27, 1998; accepted September 21, 1998. (Zhou et al. 1990;Monsma et al. 1990;Sunahara et al. 1990;Dearry et al. 1990) and D 1B (Tiberi et al. 1991) or D 5 (Sunahara et al. 1991], both of these linked functionally to stimulation of cAMP synthesis, and preferentially recognizing 1-phenyl-tetrahydrobenzazepines (e.g., SCH23390). The D 2 -like receptors come from at least three genes and include multiple splice variants. The D 2 -like receptors [D 2S (Bunzow et al. 1988), D 2L (Giros et al. 1989;Monsma et al. 1989), D 3 (Sokoloff et al. 1990, and D 4 ] sometimes are linked to inhibition of cAMP synthesis and have a different pharmacological specificity from the D 1 -like receptors (i.e., having much higher affinity for spiperone or sulpiride).The traditional view of antipsychotic drug efficacy posits a primary role for pharmacological antagonism of D 2 -like receptors. Despite the demonstrable effectiveness of dopamine D 2 receptor antagonists, however, a substantial number (up to 20%) of patients are considered unresponsive to these typical antipsychotics (Kane et al. 1988). Furthermore, the typical antipsychotics have significant and serious side effects that make them less than optimal therapeutic agents (see Peacock and Gerlach 1996). For example, they cause acute drug-induced parkinsonian symptoms (...