VistaGen Therapeutics Appoints Mark A. Smith as Chief Medical Officer
June 20, 2016 at 08:01 am EDT
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VistaGen Therapeutics, Inc. announced it has appointed Mark A. Smith as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Smith is a research psychiatrist with more than 20 years of experience in basic research and CNS drug development from the lab bench through clinical proof of concept studies. He has been a successful project leader in both discovery and development resulting in approximately 20 investigational new drugs (INDs). Prior to joining VistaGen, Dr. Smith served as the Clinical Lead for Neuropsychiatry at Teva Pharmaceuticals, where he was accountable for the strategy and clinical development of neuropsychiatric drugs through all phases of development with a focus on schizophrenia, sleep disorders and agitation.
Vistagen Therapeutics, Inc. is a late clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. The Company focuses on transforming the treatment landscape for individuals living with anxiety, depression, and other central nervous system (CNS) disorders. It is advancing therapeutics for treatment of anxiety, depression, and multiple CNS disorders. Its pipeline includes six clinical-stage product candidates, including fasedienol (PH94B), itruvone (PH10), PH15, PH80, and PH284, each an investigational agent belonging to a new class of drugs known as pherines, as well as AV-101, which is an oral antagonist of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR). Pherines, which are administered as low-dose nasal sprays, are designed with a rapid-onset mechanism of action that activates chemosensory neurons in the nasal cavity and can impact key neural circuits in the brain without systemic uptake or direct activity on CNS neurons in the brain. PH94B is a synthetic investigational pherine from the androstane family.