Joseph Belanoff
Management
Yes I'm glad you asked that. It's a little more scientifically far field than I usually get in conference calls. But, RK you know me I could talk about this for a long time. So, the bottom line, it's been known for quite a while that there are neuromuscular diseases and ALS is a good example where you have aberrant cortisol activity. Cortisol levels are higher, people lose their diurnal rhythm and there really has been a thought that this contributes to disease progression. What really got us interested in ALS specifically, is there's a good animal model of ALS, it's obviously not exactly the same as ALS, but it's one that it's been used for a very long time called the wobbler mice. And in some sense, it sounds sort of like what it is, these are animals, which really lose their coordination and may which manifests similar symptoms to what people do who have ALS. And they have the same cortisol issues that people do as well. And now in, I guess almost half a dozen publications been shown that Dazucorilant GR modulation, really changes that. And in the animals, at least, not only the patient, did not only the animals, slow their decline in their neurologic symptoms, they actually improve over a period of time. So of course, not everything in animals translates to people, it'd be wonderful if that actually do translate to people. But the bottom line is there is really a good reason to even try. I said it before ALS is kind of as much as we have when the Mount Everest of medical maladies terrible problem. And if we could offer these patients anything that resembled the results that we saw in animals that would be wonderful thing. Now, your second question is also precious, because there are other neuromuscular diseases where there is cortisol aberration, for instance, Huntington's disease is one. And we actually have preclinical investigators who are studying Huntington's at this point, happen to just coincidentally be talking to an investigator today, who is interested in looking at GR modulation in Parkinson's disease. So as you know, Psychiatry and Neurology have been my interest for a very long period of time. These are very difficult interest, areas in which to show progress. But I do think that we will be enlarging our programs in this area, and hopefully, ultimately be able to offer patients, something they clearly cannot get today.