Platform
Afraxis' goal is to develop therapeutics that restore normal dendritic spine biology and synaptic function, leading to improvements in behavior and cognition. To achieve this, Afraxis has developed a high content analysis platform that determines population profiles of dendritic spine shape and size, as well as synaptic function. These datasets allow Afraxis scientists to identify compounds that improve dendritic spine biology and directly compare their impact, providing a rational approach to identify treatments for CNS disorders.
Afraxis is using this platform to discover novel targets and optimize the efficacy of compounds in its drug discovery programs. Additional applications include profiling clinical stage compounds with demonstrated safety and PK for the purposes of identifying new CNS opportunities.
This quantitative evaluation of dendritic spine shape and function provides an analytical method to evaluate the efficacy of compounds and overcomes the limitations that result from using pharmacological activity of compounds in animal efficacy models as the sole determinant to predict efficacy in humans. Combining this platform with standard biochemical and animal efficacy evaluations will produce drug candidates that have an increased likelihood of demonstrating efficacy in human trials.
Biology