RespireRx Pharmaceuticals Inc. Reports Preclinical Pain Relief for their Non-Opioid Lead GABAkine

Glen Rock, N.J., Feb. 13, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RespireRx Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTC Pink Market: RSPI) (“RespireRx” or the “Company”), a leader in the discovery and development of innovative and revolutionary treatments to combat diseases caused by disruption of neuronal signaling, is pleased to announce that KRM-II-81, its lead GABA_A receptor potentiator (GABAkine), has advanced to the next level of evaluation within the NIH HEAL Initiative Preclinical Screening Platform for Pain (PSPP) program.

The Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative, is an aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis. Launched in April 2018, the initiative is focused on improving prevention and treatment strategies for opioid misuse and addiction, and enhancing pain management. For more information, visit: https://heal.nih.gov.

The PSPP program, part of the NIH HEAL Initiative, evaluates non-opioid assets in a battery of established preclinical pain models. The PSPP program accepts small molecules, biologics, devices, or natural products for evaluation, from researchers in academia and industry worldwide. For more information, visit: https://heal.nih.gov/research/preclinical-translational/screening-plat ....

Emerging data showed that KRM-II-81 blocked pain-like behaviors in rats at doses with minimal or no detectable side effects. These observations were made with both male and female rats in two measures each, in models of post-incision pain and spinal nerve ligation-induced persistent neuropathic pain. These research findings support prior observations by our and other laboratories that KRM-II-81 is effective in relieving acute, chronic, and neuropathic pain in a number of models without tolerance development or sedation. These data trigger the advancement of KRM-II-81 within the NIH PSPP program where additional disease-specific pain models will be evaluated.

Dr. Jeffrey M. Witkin, a Senior Research Fellow with the Company said that “we are excited to see the robust anti-pain efficacy of KRM-II-81, knowing the urgent need for non-opioid pain therapeutics. We continue to be impressed by the comparative ‘therapeutic index’ of this compound that we had predicted from earlier research.”

Dr. Lippa added, “We are all very excited about developing KRM-II-81 and expanding the IND enabling studies so as to begin human studies. Pending clinical validation, we believe that KRM-II-81 has the potential to represent a breakthrough medication for pain, epilepsy, and other neuropsychiatric disorders.”