H. Lundbeck A/S, a Danish pharmaceutical firm focused on psychiatric and neurological treatments, recently announced its partnership with Vanderbilt University to license and advance collaborative research for treating schizophrenia cases.
The team’s approach will focus on the amount of dopamine documented in schizophrenia patients’ brains, a Lundbeck release said. Because excessive dopamine levels can cause psychosis, the researchers aim to inhibit, or reverse, the amount of the chemical that is released in the brain.
Tests to date show substantial efficacy and a low risk of side effects, officials said in the release. Scientists added that while their approach targets patients previously unresponsive to more conventional treatment, their work might also be applicable to other brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
"We are impressed with the research and new hypothesis created by Vanderbilt and are excited to collaborate to take this work forward," Kim Andersen, Lundbeck’s senior vice president of research, said in the release. “Huge unmet medical needs remain within schizophrenia, a debilitating and potentially life threatening disease, and we are hopeful that this may enable us to provide a new treatment that could improve the life of many patients.”
