New Organon paper on Org-24448 (Farampator) just published yesterday. A very small single dose memory study (16 healthy elderly subjects). Results mixed, with improvement in short term memory, but drug seemed to impair episodic memory. Subjects were given a single 500 mg dose, but interestingly, some subjects got higher blood levels of the drug than did others. Those with the higher blood levels had the poorer memory results, but this might have been because they also had more side effects (headache, somnolence, nausea). Each subject also recieved placebo in the other arm of the crossover. Hopefully we'll see Organon's monotherapy Schizo results for Org-24448 published soon -
Acute Effects of the Ampakine Farampator on Memory and Information Processing in Healthy Elderly Volunteers.Wezenberg E, Jan Verkes R, Ruigt GS, Hulstijn W, Sabbe BG.
1Department of Psychiatry (966), Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Ampakines act as positive allosteric modulators of AMPA-type glutamate receptors and facilitate hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP), a mechanism associated with memory storage and consolidation. The present study investigated the acute effects of farampator, 1-(benzofurazan-5-ylcarbonyl) piperidine, on memory and information processes in healthy elderly volunteers. A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, cross-over study was performed in 16 healthy, elderly volunteers (eight male, eight female; mean age 66.1, SD 4.5 years). All subjects received farampator (500 mg) and placebo. Testing took place 1 h after drug intake, which was around T(max) for farampator. Subjects performed tasks assessing episodic memory (wordlist learning and picture memory), working and short-term memory (N-back, symbol recall) and motor learning (maze task, pursuit rotor). Information processing was assessed with a tangled lines task, the symbol digit substitution test (SDST) and the continuous trail making test (CTMT). Farampator (500 mg) unequivocally improved short-term memory but appeared to impair episodic memory. Furthermore, it tended to decrease the number of switching errors in the CTMT. Drug-induced side effects (SEs) included headache, somnolence and nausea. Subjects with SEs had significantly higher plasma levels of farampator than subjects without SEs. Additional analyses revealed that in the farampator condition the group without SEs showed a significantly superior memory performance relative to the group with SEs. The positive results on short-term memory and the favorable trends in the trail making test (CTMT) are interesting in view of the development of ampakines in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia.Neuropsychopharmacology advance online publication, 22 November 2006; doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1301257.
PMID: 17119538 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
