Cortex secures patent rights for combined use of AMPAKINE and mGluR5 compounds for Fragile X syndrome treatment

Cortex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCBB (CORX)) announced that the rights to a published patent application entitled, "Pharmacological Modulation of Positive AMPA Receptor Modulator Effects on Neurotrophin Expression" (PCT/US2007/066947), has been licensed exclusively to Cortex from the University of California.

“Pharmacological Modulation of Positive AMPA Receptor Modulator Effects on Neurotrophin Expression”

This broad method-of-use patent application covers the combined use of AMPAKINE compounds and metabotropic glutamate receptor type 5 (mGluR5) antagonists for the treatment of Fragile X syndrome, the most common genetically proven cause of autism, and for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. "Early clinical studies with mGluR5 antagonists have shown promising results in Fragile X patients, and in animal studies the combination of these agents with our AMPAKINE compounds provides additional benefit via synergistic effects. If these effects hold up in clinical studies, the combination of these agents could be an important treatment option for Fragile X patients," commented Dr. Mark A. Varney, President and CEO of Cortex.

The inventors, Drs Julie Lauterborn, Christine Gall, and Gary Lynch, are neuroscientists at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Cortex provided the AMPAKINE compounds and financial support for these studies. The same neuroscientists at UCI have previously demonstrated that brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) alone, when injected into the brain, can restore some of the deficits that occur in a mouse model of Fragile X mice. However, BDNF would need to be injected directly into the brain to have an effect. The UCI investigators demonstrated that oral or injected AMPAKINE compounds can increase the production of BDNF in the brain in Fragile X mice, but when combined with an mGluR5 antagonist, these increases in BDNF were larger. "This also raises the question of whether other disorders in which BDNF plays a role, such as Parkinson's or Huntington's disease, might benefit from the AMPAKINE and mGluR5 antagonist combination," said Dr. Varney.