Karuna Therapeutics and PsychoGenics Announce Drug Discovery Collaboration

Karuna Therapeutics, Inc. an innovative clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to developing novel therapies with the potential to transform the lives of people with disabling and potentially fatal neuropsychiatric disorders and pain, and PGI Drug Discovery LLC (PsychoGenics), a phenotypic drug discovery platform company, announced that the companies have entered a multi-year drug discovery and development agreement to identify potential novel drug candidates for the treatment of severe neuropsychiatric disorders.

Under the terms of the agreement, Karuna will provide an upfront payment to PsychoGenics for access to its proprietary screening platforms, which leverage computer vision and machine learning, to discover novel neuropsychiatric treatments. Each party is eligible to receive payments upon reaching pre-specified development, regulatory and commercial milestones, as well as royalties on net sales, for products developed under the agreement.

“PsychoGenics is a leader in preclinical behavioral neurobiology with a successful track record of identifying novel drug candidates for the treatment of serious and complex neuropsychiatric disorders via its proprietary target-agnostic machine learning approach,” said Steve Paul, M.D., chief executive officer, president and chairman of Karuna Therapeutics. “We look forward to leveraging our collective expertise in neuroscience and CNS drug discovery to identify and evaluate new drug candidates to further enhance and complement our pipeline of differentiated target-directed neuropsychiatric drugs, including KarXT, our lead candidate in development for the treatment of schizophrenia and dementia-related psychosis.”

“Karuna’s established leadership team and demonstrated success in neuropsychiatric drug discovery and development has put them at the forefront of leading the next new generation of neuropsychiatric treatments,” said Emer Leahy, Ph.D., chief executive officer and president of PsychoGenics. “Together we share a common vision of discovering novel drug candidates to treat neuropsychiatric disorders. The collaboration with Karuna enables us to continue to contribute to leading discoveries in the field of neuroscience.”