Resilience and PsychoGenics Announce a Drug Discovery Partnership

Companies will Work Together to Identify New Treatments for PTSD

BOSTON & TARRYTOWN, N.Y.--()--Resilience Therapeutics, Inc. (Resilience) and PGI Drug Discovery LLC (PsychoGenics), today announced that they have entered into a partnership to discover and optimize novel treatments for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and related conditions.

Under the terms of the agreement, PsychoGenics, which has made a strategic investment in Resilience, is providing access to their powerful discovery technology platforms including its SmartCube® system, and expertise for the development of novel therapeutics for PTSD and other stress-related disorders. The PsychoGenics’ technology platform combines broad in vivo behavioral expertise with recent developments in robotics, computer vision and bioinformatics to evaluate drug candidates for potential utility across the spectrum of CNS disease indications. Resilience has identified multiple targets that play a fundamental role in the pathogenesis of stress-related diseases such as PTSD, as well as proprietary disease modifying therapeutic modulators of those targets.

“We are excited to have the opportunity to work with the talented Resilience discovery team and look forward to pursuing these important and challenging research programs together.” remarked Emer Leahy, Ph.D., PsychoGenics’ President & Chief Executive Officer. “We are continuously seeking opportunities to collaborate with companies that share our commitment to pursue novel therapies for CNS disorders. We are confident, given our successes with other partners to-date, that our high-throughput in vivo platforms together with the Resilience compounds and complementary capabilities will deliver much needed treatments to patients with PTSD.”

Working in partnership with pharmaceutical and biotech companies, PsychoGenics has been instrumental in identifying therapeutic potential for early stage compounds with novel mechanisms of action and discontinued compounds. Together, Resilience and PsychoGenics will interrogate novel and gold-standard animal models for compound screening, biomarker development as well as the identification and validation of novel targets. The result will be the creation of a unique and proprietary drug discovery engine dedicated to the development and commercialization of therapeutics for PTSD and related conditions.

“We are very excited about our growing portfolio of both early and late stage preclinical programs that are based on novel molecular targets known to play important roles in the pathophysiology of PTSD. These targets are central to different pathways underlying fear learning, reward and stress-responses. Each pathway has strong preclinical data, validating human biology and existing tool compounds to initiate drug development programs.” said Brad Geddes, Ph.D., Resilience co-Founder and COO. “We will leverage the individual and collaborative efforts in the PsychoGenics and Resilience labs to progress these programs to the clinic. We will also generate new insights into the pathways involved in PTSD and other stress related disorders, providing additional opportunities to develop disease-modifying therapeutics that will be meaningful to patients.”

About PTSD

PTSD is a devastating illness that can arise after a traumatic event. Symptoms include paralyzing fear, intrusive memories, panic and social isolation. Everyone is susceptible to PTSD because traumas of any kind can lead to the development of this debilitating disorder. The NIH estimates that over 8.4 million people in the US alone are suffering from PTSD leading to over $3B annually in direct healthcare costs and $30B in indirect healthcare costs and socioeconomic losses. Unfortunately, despite the gravity of this large unmet medical need, there are no pharmaceutical treatments available to effectively prevent or reverse this disorder.

About PsychoGenics

PsychoGenics is a leader in in vivo phenotypic drug discovery. The company applies its proprietary technology platforms in partnership with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to discover the next generation of drugs for neuropsychiatric disorders. PsychoGenics' capabilities also include standard behavioral testing, electrophysiology, molecular biology and state-of-the-art microdialysis. In addition, the company offers a variety of in-licensed transgenic mouse models that support research in areas such as Huntington’s disease, Autism spectrum disorders, psychosis/schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), muscular dystrophy and other muscle disorders.

About Resilience

Resilience Therapeutics Inc. was formed in 2014 with the primary mission of finding a cure for PTSD. The company has in-licensed a diverse array of neurobiological targets at various stages of preclinical development from top academic labs across the country that have spent years studying the pathways involved in susceptibility and resiliency after stress and trauma. These in-licensed programs thus target the underlying biology of PTSD etiology allowing Resilience to bring novel, innovative and disease-modifying therapeutics to patients. While establishing our in-house discovery and development capabilities we have also formed key external risk-sharing partnerships to accelerate the achievement of our mission. Resilience is headquartered in Boston, MA with a Lab in Cambridge, MA.

Contacts

PsychoGenics
Dr. Emer Leahy, 914-406-8000
President & CEO
info@PsychoGenics.com
www.PsychoGenics.com
or
Jeffrey R. Sabados, 617-780-2375
CEO & co-Founder
info@Psychogenics.com
www.resiliencetx.com

Contacts

PsychoGenics
Dr. Emer Leahy, 914-406-8000
President & CEO
info@PsychoGenics.com
www.PsychoGenics.com
or
Jeffrey R. Sabados, 617-780-2375
CEO & co-Founder
info@Psychogenics.com
www.resiliencetx.com