NRG Therapeutics Ltd. has closed a £16 million (US$18.3 million) series A round to take forward programs in Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, after pinning down the target of its brain penetrant small molecules.

Luye Pharma Group has received marketing approval from China’s NMPA for the triple monoamine reuptake inhibitor Ruoxinlin (toludesvenlafaxine hydrochloride) to treat patients with major depressive disorder, a condition that “has become one of the most prevalent mental disorders in China, causing a heavy burden on patients, their families and the entire society,” said Luye President Yang Rongbing.

Sensorium Therapeutics Inc. closed a $30 million series A round to fund the discovery and development of new psychiatric drugs, inspired by human ethnobotanical practices that date back hundreds or even thousands of years.

Once pharma’s great hope to replace opioid painkillers, it looks like the end for nerve growth factor (NGF) inhibitors after Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. quietly axed fasinumab, the late-stage painkilling injection it was developing in partnership with Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd. and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp.

By pairing the expression of an inhibitory ion channel with an activity-dependent promoter, researchers have developed the first on-demand gene therapy that specifically silenced hyperactive cells and prevented epileptic seizures.

Compass Pathways plc is poised to start the first ever phase III trial of the psychedelic drug psilocybin, after getting U.S. FDA backing for a study in treatment-resistant depression.

Emalex Biosciences Inc. closed an upsized and oversubscribed $250 million series D funding round intended to support a soon-to-start phase III trial and preparations for potential commercialization of ecopipam, its first-in-class drug for Tourette syndrome, a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary motor and vocal tics.

Alkermes plc’s decision to explore separating its commercial-stage neuroscience business from earlier-stage oncology efforts – forming a distinct, publicly traded company to investigate cancer therapies –  drove speculation about the launch of the firm’s Lybalvi (olanzapine and samidorphan), approved by the U.S. FDA in the middle of 2021 for schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder.

Circuit dysfunction is clearly recognized as a driver of neuropsychiatric disease, and some neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. And at the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) 2022 Congress, researchers made an argument that the same is true in multiple sclerosis (MS). Such a lens could explain the radiological-clinical paradox between the amount of structural damage and clinical severity.

There is little doubt that progress in many brain diseases is being hampered because many, maybe most, diagnostic categories do not reflect underlying brain processes. In other disease areas, modern genetic and genomic methods have arrived in the form of approved drugs, from KRAS inhibitors in cancer to PCSK9 inhibitors to lower cholesterol. But brain diseases are different. Psychiatry is simultaneously the most personal area of medicine, and the least precise.