Acadia’s piecemeal approach to neuroscience hits a snag

Developing drugs for neurological conditions has long been fraught, what with a famously unpredictable placebo effect and patient populations affected by widely varying symptoms. That’s where Acadia Pharmaceuticals has stood out, drilling down on subpopulations in neuroscience in order to cobble together new uses of its sole approved drug, Nuplazid.

But that doesn’t always work out. Yesterday, Acadia disclosed that Nuplazid failed in a clinical trial patients with certain schizophrenia symptoms.

The study was Acadia’s first effort to expand the label of Nuplazid, already approved to treat psychosis related to Parkinson’s disease. But it’s hardly the last. The company is running trials on a different subset of schizophrenia, dementia-related psychosis, and major depressive disorder.

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