Tetra forms scientific advisory board, additional funding

Kathy Mahdoubi | | Health Imaging | Molecular Imaging

The pharmaceutical company Tetra Discovery Partners out of Grand Rapids, Mich., announced yesterday that investments have been locked in from Grand Angels and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation and that official advisors have been chosen for the company’s board.

"These new funds will support additional work aimed at the filing of our first Investigational New Drug (IND) application for our cognition drug candidate in 2015," said Mark Gurney, PhD, chairman and chief executive officer of Tetra, in a press release. "Thanks to the strong, continued backing of Grand Angels, our grant support through the NIH Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network (BPN), the National Institute of Aging, and the National Institute of Mental Health, and now this early strategic investment by JJDC and other investors, we expect to initiate human clinical trials for our first product in either Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia next year."

The developers of neurotherapeutics have brought in four scientific advisers: Catherine D. Strader, PhD, a founding partner from Synergy Partners, R&D Solutions and former executive vice president and chief scientific officer for Schering-Plough and vice president of Merck Research Laboratories; Jeffrey S. Nye, MD, PhD, vice president neuroscience innovation and scientific partnership strategy of Janssen Research and Development, Johnson & Johnson Innovation; Scott A. Reines, MD, PhD, former senior vice president of Central Nervous System, Pain and Translational Medicine at Janssen Research & Development; and James S. MacDonald, PhD, founding partner of Synergy Partners and R&D Solutions and previous executive vice president of preclinical development at Schering Plough Research Institute.

“Each of these individuals is an industry leader whose many years of expertise in the field of neuroscience drug development will be invaluable to our company as Tetra advances its subtype-selective PDE4 allosteric modulators for neurological, psychiatric, and inflammatory diseases into clinical development and eventual commercialization," added Gurney.


 

Kathy Mahdoubi

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