Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals and PGI Drug Discovery have entered into a partnership to discover and optimize novel treatments for brain disorders and psychiatric conditions.
Under the terms of the agreement, PsychoGenics is providing access to its phenotypic discovery platforms, including its SmartCube system and machine learning expertise, for unbiased discovery of novel therapeutics for brain disorders identified from the Blue Oak library of privileged chemotypes. The PsychoGenics technology platforms combine broad in vivo behavioral expertise with developments in robotics, computer vision, and bioinformatics to evaluate drug candidates for potential utility across the spectrum of CNS disease indications.
“We are excited to have the opportunity to once again work with Drs. Tom Large and Kerry Spear, founders of Blue Oak. We have worked productively together at Sunovion in the past and have every confidence we can again discover first-in-class drugs and ultimately deliver much needed treatments to patients with severely disabling psychiatric conditions” said Emer Leahy, Ph.D., PsychoGenics’ President and Chief Executive Officer.
By eliminating human bias and applying machine learning to high dimensional behavioral data, PsychoGenics with its partners, have been phenotypically identifying treatments with novel mechanisms-of-action. This includes an investigational psychotropic agent that is being studied in Phase II clinical trials as a treatment for patients with schizophrenia and for Parkinson’s disease psychosis.