Summer Entrepreneurial Experiences

EncepHeal Therapeutic’s Science Meeting Example

Sunday, August 27, 2017 7:04 pm

My most recent post illustrated an example of one of our weekly business meetings. This post will shed light on what might be covered in one of our weekly scientific meetings. These meetings are centered around presentations on a scientific paper that’s based on some particular topic that we cover over a few meetings. For example, since our compounds are analogues of Provigil (modafinil), we would like to know what clinical trials have been carried out for indications other than sleep disorders and cocaine addiction. A presentation might be on a clinical trial that uses Modafinil for the treatment of cognitive deficits associated with depression. This broadens our knowledge on potential target populations when we expand the market for our drug.

These presentations on alternate indications of our drug have served to be extremely useful, given our most recent task in having to develop a commercial development plan. This plan serves to inform about the current stage occurring in the drug development phase, as well as what is to follow. The current stage 1 involves the screening of compounds based on the company’s primary focus, which is for the treatment of cocaine addiction. The plan also briefly describes what future IND-enabling work will be conducted, which is necessary prior to moving the compound(s) onto clinical trials. Also included in this document are alternative indications for the lead compound. The chief science officer, chief research officer, and myself worked on this document for the past week. We had to compose convincing arguments for why we believe our lead compound can be used to target alternative indications, such as depression, cognition, and ADHD. The information we used to base our arguments off of was extracted from the presentations we’ve had over the past couple of months. Using ADHD as one example: we need to be able to judge which animal model for ADHD is the best and most feasible one to use, why we think our compound would show positive results, and how this might compare and contrast with current approved medications.

I meant to submit this post earlier, but due to the delay I’m pleased to announce that our commercial development plan has recently been approved by the NIH (National Institute of Heath)! This means that the experiments we proposed for future work will (most likely) be sufficient enough to support the indications we believe our compounds can be used for. This is very exciting for future investors because if our lead compound shows promising initial non-clinical results, then we can move forward with strong evidence for expanding the market for our drug. Very exciting!

Although I only have one more post to share, this is not the end of my experience. I’m fortunate to have been asked to continue interning for the company throughout the spring of 2018. This is a very exciting time because the company is growing at a much more rapid pace than when I had initially started working. I’ll be able to take on different projects that will help progress the next stage of drug developement. Stay tuned!

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