Monument Therapeutics presents positive preclinical data for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia programme

Manchester, UK, August 02, 2022: Monument Therapeutics, a stratified medicine company, announced at the British Association for Psychopharmacology conference, positive preclinical results supporting the use of their proprietary non-invasive digital biomarker and drug MT1988 to treat cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia. The preclinical studies were conducted in collaboration with the School of Psychology, University of Nottingham.

Currently, there are no treatments on the market for cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia, despite considerable efforts by pharmaceutical companies over the last decade. One of the recognised limitations of previous attempts is that trials included the entire population of patients meeting schizophrenia diagnostic criteria, despite widespread acceptance that this reflects a biologically heterogeneous group, who are unlikely to all respond to the same type of drug. With this inclusion of all patients, it has been a challenge to understand whether these trials have reported a negative outcome due to the heterogeneous nature of the study population, or whether the compounds have indeed been ineffective.

Monument’s unique approach solves this issue by using a non-invasive digital biomarker to identify the sub-group of patients with schizophrenia that have a common neurobiological underpinning. This allows the identification of specific patients for whom the target compound will work, greatly increasing the chance of trial success and ultimately allowing a precision medicine approach for this disabling psychiatric disorder. Planning for the first human studies in this programme has already started.

Kiri Granger, Chief Scientific Officer of Monument Therapeutics, said: “Schizophrenia affects around 20 million people worldwide¹, however there are no approved treatments for the common and disabling cognitive impairment associated with the disorder. Our preclinical work has enabled us to rapidly establish positive preclinical proof of mechanism evidence for our biomarker and drug combination, demonstrating pro-cognitive effects prior to moving to clinic.  Combined with our patient stratification approach using our digital biomarker, we believe MT1988 has the potential to address the major problem of cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia.”