Article Excerpt:
TWST: Would you give us a brief historical sketch of the company and a picture of the things you are doing at the present time?Dr. Belanoff: Corcept Therapeutics is a company that was founded to treat severe psychiatric and neurological disorders, the first of which is psychotic major depression. The research in psychotic major depression, which led to the founding of Corcept, was started by Alan Schatzberg almost 30 years ago at Harvard University and continued for the last 15 years at Stanford University. He sensed that because of abnormalities in the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal system (the system of the body that responds to stress), a drug that blocked the hormone cortisol (the 'stress hormone') might be useful in rapidly reversing the psychotic symptoms of psychotic major depression. Early studies were done at Stanford using my Investigator IND. After Corcept was founded, the drug development program has progressed from the issuance of use patents for our medication, CORLUX', to the point where we expect to open the envelope on three Phase III studies in the second half of this year, and two of the studies will be reported in the third quarter and the third study will be reported in the fourth quarter. At the company, we are all looking forward to these exciting events.
TWST: Would you explain what psychotic major depression is and how it
differs from other well-known mental illnesses?
Dr. Belanoff: Depression, as I am sure your readers know, is a common
debilitating illness. Unfortunately, there are some patients who, when
they get depressed, also develop psychotic symptoms. By psychotic
symptoms, I mean either hallucinations, hearing things that aren't
there, seeing things that aren't there, or delusional thinking.
Delusional thinking is a firmly held belief that can't be shaken by
factual evidence. For instance, there was a patient in one of our early
studies, a 58-year-old physician, who believed that he had cancer. It
didn't matter that he went to a dozen very good oncologists, all of whom
told him he didn't have cancer. Despite the evidence, it was an
unshakeable belief for him. And as a result, he was extremely suicidal
because he believed that if the cancer was going to kill him, he might
as well kill himself first. So psychotic major depression is a severe
form of depression, again, characterized by all the symptoms of
depression, but in addition, having psychotic symptoms that emerge
during the depressive episode.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CORT
TWST Newsletter
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.