Milestone reached in Biotie Wyeth collaboration for the development of PDE10 inhibitors for schizophrenia

Aug 28 2009

Biotie Reaches Milestone in Wyeth Collaboration

Biotie announced today that it has reached a milestone in its collaboration with Wyeth for the development of PDE10 (phosphodiesterase 10) inhibitors for schizophrenia, triggering a USD 1.0 million milestone payment to Biotie.

Timo Veromaa, President and CEO of Biotie said "We are pleased with the progress we have made in collaboration with Wyeth on the PDE10 inhibitor program and look forward to beginning our work together in the clinic. We believe this partnership provides further validation for our PDE platform technology, which has already provided us with one active clinical program and several pre-clinical programs."

PDE10 is a novel CNS drug target that is thought to play an important role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Biotie has demonstrated that inhibitors of PDE10 display promising antipsychotic activity in experimental models, indicating the potential for a superior efficacy and tolerability profile versus current standard therapies. Data from these studies has recently been presented for the first time at the American Chemical Society Fall National Meeting in Washington DC (August 16 - 20). Additional data will also be presented at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL (October 17 - 21).