With chronic pain treatment focus
PharmNovo was founded in 2008 by Bengt von Mentzer after 27 years as a drug discovery group leader for Astra Zeneca. With a focus on chronic pain treatment, PharmNovo started to develop novel delta opioid receptor agonists.
With chemist, Ingemar Starke, new chemistry was developed and we identified novel potent, selective and biased DOR agonists (a new concept in pharmacology at the time). In 2010, David Kendall, Professor of Pharmacology at Nottingham University, UK joined the company part time and became full time CSO in 2015.
In 2016 a collaboration with Professor Eamon Kelly’s research group at the University of Bristol was started with the aim of studying delta opioid receptor biased agonism. This collaboration has been supported by grants from the UK Medical Research Council.
Pre-clinical studies were completed for the candidate compound PN6047 with very promising results and at the end of the year PharmNovo was granted a patent in the USA.
