Leading the Charge to Develop the First Orexin-Targeted Therapy to Address Narcolepsy at its Root Cause
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The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.
The central nervous system (CNS) plays an incredibly important part in how humans function on a day-to-day basis. Unfortunately, millions of people worldwide suffer from disorders within the CNS, causing immeasurable struggles and burdens as they try to live their lives normally.
One clinical-stage pharmaceutical company, NLS Pharmaceutics AG (NASDAQ: NLSP), has made its mission to develop safe and effective drugs for these patients, effectively redefining CNS therapies. After it recently went public this year, NLS Pharmaceutics has made great strides toward this quest, with Quilience®, the company’s lead drug candidate aimed at treating narcolepsy.
Quilience is different because its multimodal mechanism includes targeting orexin receptors in the brain. A lack of the neurohormone orexin, is known to be the root cause of classic narcolepsy, so by stimulating the orexin receptors, Quilience may be able to significantly improve the 2 key symptoms of narcolepsy, excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) and cataplexy (loss of muscle tone upon emotional stimulation). Importantly, Quilience also acts as a reuptake inhibitor of key monoamine neurotransmitters, which offers additional stimulant properties and may enable patients to need only one drug rather than the cocktail of pharmaceuticals that narcolepsy patients typically take today.
Recently, Takeda (NYSE: TAK), a large drug manufacturer that was developing a pure orexin agonist stopped their Phase 2 trials due to safety concerns, and as a result, NLS is now positioned as the company that may bring the first orexin-targeted treatment for narcolepsy to the market. This could be highly valuable. Because of the change in the competitive landscape, Quilience has emerged as a formidable entrant in the $2.5 billion narcolepsy treatment market, which is expected to grow to nearly $5 billion by 2026. NLS Pharmaceutics has no debt and a market cap of $30M; competitors like Jazz Pharmaceuticals PLC (NASDAQ: JAZZ), Harmony Biosciences Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: HRMY) have larger market caps that could be in NLS’ future.
Nearly 3 million people across the globe have narcolepsy, characterized by an inability to have self-regulated sleep cycles. However, a repurposed drug like Quilience is being developed to help those suffering specifically from narcolepsy and sleep-related disorders. Having already been used in compassionate care by doctors where the active ingredient mazindol demonstrated positive results in treating patients with narcolepsy, NLS Pharmaceutics now has a patented new formulation with exclusive rights. And importantly, the active ingredient in Quilience has a long history of safety as an obesity treatment that was on the market for approximately 40 years in both Europe and the U.S. Qulience is the subject of an ongoing Phase 2 trial, and NLS expects clinical data in a few months to support further development in narcolepsy. Given the valuation disconnect between NLS and its more advanced competitors, a positive result could enable shares of NLS to close the valuation gap in the industry.
Led by Co-Founder and CEO Alex Zwyer, who has 25 years of international business experience as well as 10 years in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology field, NLS Pharmaceutics’s leadership team includes a variety of professionals with a successful track record in developing products in the pharmaceutical space. The company is partnered with international powerhouses like Universität Zürich, Université de Lausanne, ETH Zürich, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) and Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris.
In addition to Quilience, NLS Pharmaceutics has a clinical-stage drug candidate Nolazol® for the treatment of ADHD, and also has a pipeline of other earlier-stage compounds to treat serious or life-threatening CNS diseases.
Connecting brains all over the world, NLS Pharmaceuticals is on track to help patients everywhere access safer and effective CNS therapies.
The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.
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