BetterLife Pharma Inc (CSE:BETR) (OTCQB:BETRF) (FRA:NPAU) announced Tuesday that it has filed patent protection for the newest compound to enter its pipeline -- dihydrohonokiol-B (TD-010).
Specifically, the company said the patent protection concerns the use of TD-010 as a treatment for sedative, hypnotic, or anxiolytic-use disorder.
Advancement of TD-010 comes as studies by the US Department of Veterans Affairs indicate that prescription drug abuse has reached epidemic levels. In fact, benzodiazepine prescriptions spiked 34% from mid-February to mid-March of 2020, coinciding with the media's reporting on the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
READ: BetterLife Pharma partners with Eurofins Discovery for pharmacology studies of Eurofins' LSD-derived molecule TD-0148A
Patrick Kroupa, BetterLife’s chief psychedelic officer, said that recent small trials exhibited benefits in alleviating benzodiazepine-withdrawal symptoms at a psychedelic ibogaine clinic that focuses on treating opiate addiction.
"Dihydrohonokiol-B provided relief to patients with lorazepam and alprazolam withdrawal symptoms when ibogaine did not,” Kroupa said in a statement. “We are excited to work with BetterLife to begin TD-010 IND enabling studies and human clinical trials.”
Dr Ahmad Doroudian, CEO of BetterLife, added: “Anxiolytic use disorder is too often overshadowed by the opioid epidemic. The patient population for this indication is growing and we feel BetterLife is poised to make a rapid difference in patients’ lives with TD-010.”
BetterLife is an emerging biotechnology company engaged in the development and commercialization of next-generation psychedelic products for the treatment of mental disorders. Utilizing drug delivery platform technologies, BetterLife is refining and developing drug candidates from a broad set of complementary interferon-based technologies, which have the potential to engage the immune system to fight virus infections, such as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and human papillomavirus.
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