TAAR1 GPCR agonist
phase III candidate for schizophrenia
from in vivo phenotypic screening
ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters
Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, Marlborough, MA
Ulotaront (SEP-363856) is a Phase III candidate with FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the treatment of schizophrenia with demonstrated efficacy based on a physician-rated scale (PANSS) in a 4-week placebo-controlled trial and continued improvement in an open-label extension study. Reviewer Jake Schwarz says, “ulotaront was developed in collaboration with Psychogenics using their SmartCube® [high-throughput phenotypic screening] technology. By way of background, Psychogenics characterized all marketed CNS drugs using a (proprietary) variety of stimuli in rodents and leveraged machine learning to develop a ‘fingerprint’ for each drug. Many companies partner with Psychogenics to get a sense of what conditions their novel MOA drugs might be able to treat. That ulotaront continues to progress is great news for patients with schizophrenia, as…