Can two old drugs — including an Eli Lilly flop — make one good treatment for Alzheimer’s? Karuna has $42M to find out
Back when Steven Paul was a star CNS researcher who had jumped to industry at Eli Lilly back in ’93, he boasted of a broad pipeline of intriguing new drugs he was working on — including a promising muscarinic acetylcholine receptor agonist called xanomeline. But that drug, like so many others at Lilly, was scuttled — in this case by the adverse events triggered by off-target effects.
Today, Paul — who recently stepped down as CEO of Voyager — is investing in a $42 million round with some high-profile investors to back a company that believes it has found a way to make xanomeline work the way they had seen in the clinic, without the onerous side effects that killed the earlier project.
Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.
You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.
