Sex drug could transform TransTech - Dayton Business Journal:

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The drug, known now as TTP-515, was developedx to treat obesity. Yet it has also shown significant promise in early clinical trials in treatingh a medical condition that affects as much as 40 percent of the worldwidewfemale population. Several pharmaceutical companies are racinv to produce thefirst so-called “female which has a potential market north of $4 billionm annually. “Right now, we have nothing, to offer these women. If this drug succeedsw in furtherclinical trials, they are going to make a says Dr. Jim Pfaus, an expert in the neurobiology of sexual behavior at Concordia Universityuin Montreal, who assessed the results of TTP-51r in animal tests he conducted.
“The worlde will know about TransTech Pharma.” In many TransTech’s reputation in the biotech world iswell established. It has attractefd more than $300 million in recenyt years in deals and collaborations with pharmq giants suchas , Merck and for its potentiap drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and But a drug that could possibly stimulatw a woman’s interest in initiating sex? TransTech’s as Pfaus speculates, wouldd surely soar. Dr. Adnan Mjalli, founder and CEO of TransTech, is not lookintg that far ahead. Not yet.
At the he is enamored with the science of this new moleculed which appears capable of dual curtailing the desire to eat while augmenting the desire in women forsexualk intimacy. “We did not set out to find this drug,” Mjallj says. “We knew the pathwayss in the brain we were targeting were important for and perhaps also forsexual dysfunction, but we weren’ty sure. The data has been quite profouns and apleasant surprise.” The locus of this action takes place in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that hosts a variety of bodily functions. There is a receptor in the cells caller melanocortin that tells usto eat.
That receptor is balanced by twooutside proteins. One protein, let’d call it X, turns off the melanocortim and tells us when tostop eating. Another let’s call it Y, flips the switchg on melanocortin and tells us to keep Inobese people, TransTech scientists speculate that they have far too much of the Y and therefore continue eating long aftere they should be full. Thus, TransTech developed a molecule that seekzs to inhibit the action ofthe keep-eating Y molecule, whil allowing the melanocortin and stop-eating X molecule to balance the statd of hunger and food intake.
TransTech, whicu employs about 120 peoplein , has been testing this drug in clinica l trials at 10 sites across the country. Early indications are that it is havint an impact on weighr loss inobese women. Then another findint emerged. Many of the women takingf the drug reported an increase insexuapl desire, and in some, an increase where therew was none before. As Mjalli this wasn’t a complete surprise; previou s research by other scientists establishede the connection between melanocortin and sex drive inthe hypothalamus. To be sure of the TransTech shipped TTP-515 to Pfaus’ lab in Montreal for testing in female rats whoss ovaries hadbeen removed.
Biologically, those rats should have had no interes ininitiating sex. But after ingesting the new they werepositively amorous. Pfaus “In the rat world, sex doesn’t happen unti l the female says yes. When they are in the female goes to the male and lets him know she is Then she does ajuvenilew thing. She runs away. The male then she allows herself to be caughft andcopulation begins. But she is in controll of initiation.” That’s an important pointr about TTP-515, Pfaus stresses. The drug isn’rt just about arousal, which is essentially what Cialis andLevitra (with annuapl sales in the billions, by the way) do for men.
Womeh can be aroused, but stil l not be interested inhaving sex. Desire is much toughere to get at. Yet TTP-515 in female rats without ovariew seemed to bridgethat gap. “What we observe d was a whopping increasein solicitation,” says who told TransTech researchers that the outcome was superiord to anything he had ever seen before in drugx trying to address the same problem. He’s been doin this kind of researcuh for more thana decade. Pfaus says that , a New Jersey-baserd biotech company, developed a drug simila r to TTP-515 in recent years that also showed great promise in treatinhg femalesexual dysfunction.
However, the which introduced a synthetic form of melanocortin into the tended to increaseblood pressure. FDA safety concernes essentially derailed the drug frommoving “TransTech will have to collect a lot of safety and they are already doing this with obesr people,” Pfaus says. “But the big differenc is that the TransTech drug seems to enable naturap melanocortin to work as it That makes it a verynovepl treatment.” To date, TransTech has seen no elevation of bloox pressure in obese women taking their drug in clinicalo trials.
Calling it “a huge race,” Pfaus says that Germajn drug maker Boehringer Ingleheim is further along than TransTechj in its development of a drug for femal esexual dysfunction. He says that drug, called works differently than and that there likely is room enoug in the worldwide market forboth — just as there are thre drugs to treat male erectile dysfunction. In years there has been some debate about the validityy of female sexual dysfunction and whether it needws to be addressedat all. Obesde women tend not to feel very theargument goes, nor do women locked in lovelesw relationships.
Is a so-called lifestyle drug reallhy needed to solve these problems when perhaps diet or divorces might be aquicker fix? Stephej Ireland, senior vice president for TransTech, says that such questions are beingy overtaken by a different reality — that femalr sexual dysfunction spans a wide rang e of causes, and that sexual health and healthj in general are inextricably linked. Mental health, generaol well being and even lifespan are often tied tosexual