Empowered Patient Podcast

Dr. Robert Risinger is the Chief Medical Officer for Neuroscience at BioXcel Therapeutics, identifying molecules that have off-target indications to address unmet neurological diseases. The initial focus is on acute agitation and the molecules that will address this agitation in patients with bipolar and schizophrenia.  Their fast-acting sublingual film formulation is an advancement over the current regime of intramuscular injections.  The drug is also being studied for agitation related to Alzheimer's disease and at-home use to reduce the number of people who go to the emergency room for untreated agitation.  Rob explains, "For example, the medication, the active pharmaceutical ingredient dexmedetomidine, was used, for years, as an IV anesthetic. At very high doses, it can produce a level of sleep or sedation so patients can undergo surgery and medical procedures. But our algorithms identified the fact that this may affect the core causal mechanism, this kind of fight or flight reaction, that we believe is r