Ms. Loewy: The company was founded around a technology platform, the regulation of cortisol, and was founded by our current CEO, Joe Belanoff, who is a psychiatrist. He and some of his colleagues at Stanford discovered that cortisol plays an important role in psychotic major depression. It is also well accepted that cortisol plays a role in some metabolic disorders, namely Cushing's syndrome, where we also have a program. So the company was formed in 1998 and went public in 2004 around that technology.
TWST: What are the lead product candidates from the technology?
Ms. Loewy: We have two Phase III trials ongoing with Corlux, which regulates cortisol by blocking the GR-II receptor, which is the cortisol receptor. We don't inhibit the synthesis of cortisol; our products block the GR-II or cortisol receptor. Corlux is our lead product. It has the same active ingredient as Mifepristone, or RU-486. It's a compound that's been around for a long time, but the discovery was that it had these beneficial uses in addition to what its currently only approved use is, which is the termination of early pregnancy. Mifepristone blocks two receptors - the cortisol, or GR-II receptor, which is what we are focused on, but it also blocks the progesterone receptor, which is what causes the termination of pregnancy. For severe diseases in targeted patient populations, like Cushing's syndrome or psychotic depression, we believe this property is not an issue. Inappropriate use can be restricted through a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS), as is the case with broadly used drugs with a similar history, such as Celgene's Thalomid, or thalidomide. We believe that the profile of Corlux is attractive for the treatment of these severe diseases. However, what we've also done is to develop additional proprietary compounds that are selective GR-II receptor antagonists, so they only block the cortisol receptor; they don't block the progesterone receptor. These selective GR-II receptor antagonists are new novel compounds, which we can use to treat less severe indications or broader markets where that kind of selective property would be more important, like diabetes, obesity or Alzheimer's disease. Our lead compound from those programs is in a Phase I study, and we already have significant proof-of-concept data in antipsychotic-induced weight gain and obesity models.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CORT
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