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RespireRx Pharmaceuticals to license our intellectual property.

Writer's picture: Terry ClaytonTerry Clayton

Updated: Feb 10, 2023




Its not often you get to be a part of a foundational technology; let alone get the chance to watch it evolve. I was so excited to get the call from the University Foundation that my team’s pharmaceutical compounds were being licensed! The monetary part was not the exciting part, rather seeing the hard work of such a fantastic team being recognized. A flood of memories of my time in the Cook group came back to me.

Full press release here.

Back in the early 2000’s I made drug targets for the central nervous system. I wanted to make drugs that would help people with Alzheimer’s but with no side effects. When I graduated, I had demonstrated it was possible to stimulate the hippocampus through the alpha 5 GABA receptors but I didn’t deliver a compound without side effects….

Building on that foundational chemistry, a group of scientists led by Drs. James Cook and Jeffrey Witkin, now Scientific Team Leaders for RespireRx, have synthesized and tested a broad series of novel chemical compounds that display GABAA receptor subtype selectivity and pharmacological specificity. They have lead compounds which display certain receptor subtype selective and pharmacological specificity. In studies using cell cultures, brain tissues and whole animals, compound KRM-II-81 acts selectively as a GABAkine at GABAA receptor subtypes that may be intimately involved in neuronal processes that underly epilepsy, pain, anxiety and certain other indications. KRM-II-81 has demonstrated highly desirable properties in animal models of these indications, in the absence of or with greatly reduced liability to produce sedation, motor incoordination, cognitive impairments, respiratory depression, tolerance, abuse and withdrawal seizures, all side effects associated with benzodiazepines. They are currently focused on the potential treatment of epilepsy and pain.

#uwm #benzodiazepine # drugdiscovery

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Harvard University
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