ACADIA initiates ENHANCE-1 trial for antipsychotic care

ACADIA Pharmaceuticals' ENHANCE-1 Phase III trial involving pimavanserin has been initiated to assess the ability of pimavanserin to treat schizophrenia in patients who have had a negative response to the antipsychotic therapies currently in use.
“About 30 percent of patients with schizophrenia do not achieve an adequate response to a single antipsychotic medication, and as a result more than one in four schizophrenia patients are treated with two or more antipsychotics,” ACADIA Executive Vice President and Head of Research and Development Serge Stankovic said. “We believe pimavanserin, through its highly selective mechanism of action, could provide an important new option for adjunctive treatment of schizophrenia and improve clinical outcomes by both augmenting the efficacy of currently used antipsychotics and lessening the undesirable side effects associated with polypharmacy.”
The current antipsychotic medications on the market used to treat schizophrenia focus on targeting the dopaminergic pathway. Pimavanserin is a selective serotonin inverse agonist, which puts it in a new class of antipsychotic medications that has a specific course of action when it targets serotonergic 5-HT2A receptors while having no effect on dopamine and other receptors that other antipsychotic medications target.