![\"Hans](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/https:\/\/d1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net\/production\/bd1b8064-dd76-4a0e-af37-3684d94d1137.jpg\")
Hans Eriksson, chief medical officer of HMNC Brain Health, said the company had raised \u20ac66.5mn from private investors and expected to raise a further \u20ac80mn to put BH-200 through to a Phase 3 clinical trial \u00a9 HMNC Brain Health<\/p>\nUnlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n
A German biotech company has reported encouraging clinical trial results for an antidepressant paired with a genetic test that identifies patients most likely to benefit from the drug.<\/p>\n
Hans Eriksson, chief medical officer of Munich-based HMNC Brain Health, called the study of its BH-200 drug in 338 patients with serious depression \u201ca major step forward in precision psychiatry\u201d. <\/p>\n
Participants were divided into three groups according to the genetic profile of hormones produced in their brain in response to stress. Although treatment with BH-200 improved everyone\u2019s symptoms, one group \u2014 accounting for 27 per cent of patients \u2014 benefited significantly more than the others.<\/p>\n
HMNC had raised \u20ac66.5mn from private investors and expected to raise a further \u20ac80mn to put BH-200 and associated \u201ccompanion diagnostic\u201d genetic tests through to the next stage, a Phase 3 clinical trial, Eriksson said. <\/p>\n
Alan Schatzberg, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and a scientific adviser to HMNC, said the BH-200 trial results \u201ccould represent a paradigm shift towards more biologically informed treatment decisions in psychiatry\u201d.<\/p>\n
BH-200 is a reformulation of nelivaptan, an antidepressant originally developed by Sanofi and discontinued in 2008 at a time when big pharmaceutical companies were abandoning the psychiatric medicine market. <\/p>\n
Hans Eriksson, chief medical officer of HMNC Brain Health, said the company had raised \u20ac66.5mn from private investors and expected to raise a further \u20ac80mn to put BH-200 through to a Phase 3 clinical trial \u00a9 HMNC Brain Health<\/p>\n
HMNC has a separate programme in collaboration with Californian biotech <\/a>Spruce Biosciences to commercialise another antidepressant called tildacerfont, originally developed by Eli Lilly. As with BH-200, companion diagnostics will direct the drug to patients whose genes suggest they are most likely to respond well.<\/p>\n Eriksson said there would inevitably be an additional cost incurred in giving patients a one-off genetic test before prescribing an antidepressant, but it would be small compared with the cost of treatment and benefits of receiving the drugs best suited to them.<\/p>\n \u201cOur test is currently based on a blood draw, which is something already incorporated into clinical practice,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are looking into developing it into a saliva test that could perhaps be delivered to the patient at home and sent for analysis before the visit to the clinician\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n HMNC is part of a new wave of biotech <\/a>companies revitalising research into depression and psychiatric medicine following the widely criticised withdrawal <\/a>of the established pharmaceutical companies from the field. <\/p>\n \u201cSome of their medications landed in small start-ups where we do things somewhat differently,\u201d said Eriksson. \u201cMy guess is that big pharma will renew its interest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[916,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-47723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-genetics","tag-genetics","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}