Domain Therapeutics wins €933,000 grant for schizophrenia project
French GPCR specialist will lead €5.1m ATHOS project
Domain Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and early development of small molecules targeting G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs), will receive a grant of €933,000 from the French government to lead the ATHOS schizophrenia project.
ATHOS, which will receive total funding of €5.1m over three years, aims to develop new drug candidates and identify therapeutic targets for schizophrenia.
The project will focus on orphan GPCRs, which are a single class of therapeutic targets.
GPCRs are the target for 40% of drugs currently on the market and represent the largest class of therapeutic targets. Orphan GPCRs have been less explored owing to the lack of an identified endogenous ligand. Around 150 orphan GPCRs have been described to date, offering a huge therapeutic potential.
Led by Domain Therapeutics, the ATHOS consortium includes Prestwick Chemical, a medicinal chemistry specialist, and the Brigitte Kieffer laboratory at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology, which also specialises in GPCRs. All three firms are based in Illkirch, France.
The Brigitte Kieffer laboratory will be in charge of mapping orphan GPCRs in the brain and obtaining appropriate animal models to validate targets for neuropsychiatric disorders.
Prestwick Chemical will apply its expertise in optimising active compounds.
‘Domain Therapeutics’ know-how in the field of GPCRs combined with our proprietary technology, DTect-All, and the excellence of our two partners will enable us to bring a solution to this challenge of identifying candidate drugs targeting orphan GPCRs linked to schizophrenia,’ said Pascal Neuville, chief executive of Domain Therapeutics.
‘The ATHOS project allows us to extend our franchise in neuropsychiatric disorders and in challenging and innovative therapeutic targets.’
