ex scientia, Sunovion Partner On Treatments For Psychiatric Disorders
By Cyndi Root
ex scientia has partnered with Sunovion Pharmaceuticals on treatments for psychiatric disorders. The companies announced the collaboration in a press release, stating that the discovery and optimization of novel medicines will use phenotypic drug discovery methods. By improving phenotypic screening and analyzing the data, researchers can find better medicines.
Dr. Thomas Large, Senior VP of Discovery and Preclinical Research at Sunovion, said, “We are extremely pleased to form a strategic alliance with ex scientia, to create an innovative approach to tackling complex psychiatric diseases, by integrating polypharmacology with behavioral insights from phenotypic data.”
ex scientia and Sunovion Agreement
The two companies have partnered in order to deliver new drug candidates to the clinic. The partners will utilize ex scientia’s bispecific compounds and large-scale phenotypic screening to help drive innovation in the design of polypharmacological drugs. Under the terms of the agreement, Sunovion will provide an upfront payment of $1 million in a deal worth $4.8 million. In return, Sunovion acquires exclusive worldwide rights to the resulting compounds while ex scientia keeps the rights to its technology.
Polypharmacology and Psychiatric Genetics
Dr. Large at Sunovion stated that integrating polypharmacology with data-driven phenotypic drug discovery is a powerful method to discover new treatments. He also stated that behavioral insights were to be gleaned from phenotypic data. Polypharmacology attempts to use a single compound against multiple targets. This approach shows promise in conditions like cancer where one drug could deliver a payload to multiple nodes in a network of targets.
In psychiatric conditions, gene profiling can offer insights into behavior. The field of psychiatric genetics works to show the genetic relationship in psychiatric disorders. In a study titled “Genetic relationship between five psychiatric disorders estimated from genome-wide SNPs,” published in Nature Genetics journal, authors state that psychiatric disorders are heritable. The article examined schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Investigators found a high correlation between schizophrenia and bipolar. They found a moderate correlation between schizophrenia and major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder, and ADHD, and major depressive disorder. The correlation was low between schizophrenia and ASD. Genetic profiling of psychiatric diseases in combination with polypharmacology may provide Sunovion and ex scientia a way to find treatments that may be effective for multiple psychiatric conditions.