RespireRx Pharmaceuticals Inc (RSPI)

[neuroinv]

There's another Lilly angle that could have relevance now or (more likely) later to Cortex. Their mGluR2/3 modulator LY2140023 came up empty (as did olanzapine/Zyprexa, due to a high placebo response) in a schizophrenia trial. Now this mGluR2/3 strategy had become Lilly's cognition emphasis in recent years, supplanting AMPA-modulators, which had seizure problems, as we have discussed. Now the interesting thing in this trial failure was the fact that three of the drug patients had seizures, yielding an incidence rate of what I estimated to be around 1.5%. Hence NI's April sidebar headline: 'Seizure Risk Dooms Lilly Drug.'

They claim that they are going to continue the program, but this compound would be DOA with the FDA. And I have some information indicating that this may be a class effect with this group of Lilly compounds. Thus one also has to wonder about Merck's mGluR2/3 program, which is run by Lilly's former head of neuroscience (now Merck's).

Lilly may be in a state of semi-denial, so this probably does not translate into anything near-term. But given their insistence a couple of years ago that they didn't need to join with Cortex, because they could beat them, one of their main weapons may have just been dismantled. Schering-Plough, GSK, and Cortex may have just had the value of their Ampakine programs enhanced by process of elimination.

NeuroInvestment