Clinical stage biopharmaceutical company seeking to transform the treatment of mental health disorders Atai Life Sciences NV (NASDAQ: ATAI) announced having launched PsyProtix a precision unit specializing on developing therapeutics for treatment-resistance depression (TRD) among other mental illnesses.
PsyProtix comes as a new platform formed with Chymia LLC, which is a break out division from Duke University Biotechnology. PsyProtix will be taking precision psychiatry approach, an upcoming field which seeks to treat disorders by factoring each patient’s variability in genes, environment, lifestyle and metabolism.
Normally, psychiatric patients are diagnosed and treated based on guidelines and criteria designed for the majority which mostly results to trial and error since each patient have their unique needs.
Precision criterion is designed to rectify this as it will allow physicians to prescribe treatments specifically targeted to an individual patient instead of relying on the trial and error approach such as using antidepressants or antipsychotics for therapeutic benefits.
“Our view is that each patient is unique, meaning that any given patient will likely have specific individual needs. This emerging technology adapts to the variability of conditions, such as depression, with the aim of allowing patients with psychiatric disorders to potentially be diagnosed and treated more accurately and efficiently according to their specific needs. It’s an honor to be collaborating with Professor Rima Kaddurah-Daouk and her team at Duke, given their great work in advancing the research of metabolomics and their study of neuropsychiatric disorders,” said the CSO of Atai Life Sciences, Srinivas Rao.
