Soleno Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics for the treatment of rare diseases, announced that it has signed a collaboration agreement with Vanderbilt University. This collaboration aims to discover and develop novel KATP channel activators with the potential to treat rare diseases. The collaboration will be led by Dr Craig Lindsley and Jerod Denton. Dr Lindsley is currently the William K. Warren, Jr. Chair in Medicine, Professor of Pharmacology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, the Director of the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Dr Denton is a Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology and the Director of Ion Channel Pharmacology at the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery. 

ATP-dependent potassium (or KATP) channels are present in several tissues in the body. Activating these channels has been shown to be beneficial in the treatment of various rare diseases, such as hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia. Soleno’s product candidate, DCCR, is a potent activator of KATP channels and has demonstrated significant benefits in a Phase 3 study for the treatment of Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS).

“The insight we already have serves as an effective foundation to identify, characterize and develop novel KATP channel activators that may be more potent, specific and/or safer than currently approved therapeutics,” said Dr Lindsley. “Based on the role KATP channels play in controlling and regulating cellular functions, we believe therapeutics targeting this channel could have potential in treating multiple rare diseases. We look forward to working closely with Soleno, whose ongoing development of DCCR for PWS has yielded encouraging clinical results to date, to further our research in this important and widely applicable area.”

“Having discovered the only new KATP channel activator chemistries in the last 20 years, the highly experienced team of Drs. Lindsley and Denton are ideally suited to work with us to identify and characterize novel drug candidates that could serve as the underpinnings for our next generation of products,” said Anish Bhatnagar, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Soleno Therapeutics. “We believe that combining their expertise with our experience around the therapeutic potential of KATP channel activators based on our Phase 3 program of DCCR in PWS will be an effective and efficient path to new therapeutic products.”

The initial aims of this collaboration are to develop robust in vivo and in vitro tools to identify and characterize novel KATP channel activators from recently identified new classes of chemistry. Soleno expects to advance appropriate candidates generated from this collaboration into the clinic in the future.