Delix Therapeutics Announces 2 Partners in Neuroscience Drug Discovery Effort
Delix Therapeutics, a pharma company developing novel therapies for neurological disorders, is to partner with two service providers, Cellectricon and Expressive Neuroscience, to advance their development pipeline.
The neurotherapy developer hopes that the partnership will “turbocharge” their discovery of new drugs for neurological conditions. Delix investigates psychoplastogens, drugs that can promote new neuronal growth or ‘neuroplasticity’.
In a healthy brain, neurons in the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) have many branches and dendritic spines that reach out and make connections with other parts of the brain. The PFC is the area of the brain which projects to sub-cortical regions that handle fear, motivation, and reward.
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Atrophy of neurons in the PFC has been linked to stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders such as PTSD, depression, and substance use disorder. Delix’s uses the psychoplastogenic properties of psychedelic drugs to discover drugs that repair these damaged areas of the brain and treat these disorders.
Service provider company Cellectricon will partner with Delix and will assist in creating assays to test the psychoplastogens’ ability to induce structural and functional neurological changes.
Furthermore, Delix will partner with Expressive Neuroscience to leverage their CNS assay services, in silico automation tools, and cloud-based Expert platform for bioinformatic analysis.
“What Delix is ultimately trying to achieve with our non-hallucinatory psychoplastogens, is to evolve a new paradigm in the treatment of mental health disorders at scale,” said Mark Rus, CEO at Delix.
Delix alter the molecular chemistry of existing psychedelic drugs like LSD, DMT, and psilocyn to maintain their psychoplastogenic properties but remove their hallucinogenic effects.
Despite the transformative results of hallucinogen assisted therapies, Retsina Meyer, Head of Corporate Strategy for Delix pointed out some challenges in a Q&A: “Addressable patient population, cost, and access.”
Disabling the hallucinogenic properties of their therapeutics is regarded as a critical marker of success by Delix.
“Of [the patient population] who are permitted [to take hallucinogen assisted therapies], a recent survey suggested that even if recommended by a doctor, there is a large per cent who would not choose to take a psychedelic. With the size of the unmet need for these indications that are being developed, this would leave a lot of people unable to receive these transformative treatments,” explained Meyer.
Furthermore, the necessity of these drugs to be administered in the clinic under supervision of mental health professionals, would drastically increase the cost for patients.
Meyer continued: “If you can avoid the hallucinagenicity and the cardiotoxicity of the first and second-gen psychoplastogens, and make them orally bioavailable, now you can avoid the clinic. Now you have a take-at-home medication.”
“Powered by our incredible team and R&D partners at the forefront of scientific innovation, we are eager to move forward in delivering safe, accessible, and more effective take-at-home treatments to patients in need," said Rus.
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