John Quisel

Roche schiz­o­phre­nia drug that failed PhI­II gets a new life in rare dis­or­der as Or­biMed leads $90M for start­up

Un­til a few years ago, GlyT1, a glycine trans­porter, seemed like a promis­ing tar­get for an add-on ther­a­py to treat neg­a­tive symp­toms of schiz­o­phre­nia.

But sci­en­tists were thrust­ed back to the draw­ing board in 2014, when Roche re­port­ed that its GlyT1 in­hibitor, bitop­er­tin, had failed two Phase III tri­als. A few months lat­er, they scrapped the pro­gram al­to­geth­er.

The drug sat on the shelves for sev­en years. Then Disc Med­i­cine came along.

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