NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Tetra Discovery Partners today said that it will collaborate with the Broad Institute's Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research on the development of drugs for schizophrenia.
The Stanley center will use its genetic models of schizophrenia to test the potential of Tetra's drug candidates for improving cognition. According to Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Tetra, the Stanley Center uses "the largest collection of DNA samples ever assembled from patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in order to scan the entire genome for gene variants that predispose to these illnesses."
Tetra aims to advance a schizophrenia drug into human clinical trials as early as next year. It is focused on developing PDE4D inhibitors to treat a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and Huntington's disease.
"There is a need to better predict the potential efficacy of drugs with new mechanisms of action in translational models, and to better select patients for clinical trials," Tetra Founder and CEO Mark Gurney said in a statement. "The team at the Stanley Center understands this challenge. This collaboration gives our schizophrenia program the highest chance of success."