Naurex: Former Naurex execs launch Aptinyx

A team of former Naurex Inc. executives have spun out the company's discovery platform and preclinical pipeline into Aptinyx Inc. (Evanston, Ill.), a newco focused on developing treatments for psychiatric and neurologic disorders.Aptinyx President and CEO Norbert Riedel said all of Naurex's shareholders contributed an undisclosed amount of seed funding for Aptinyx as part of Naurex's acquisition by Allergan plc (NYSE:AGN) last month. Riedel was Naurex's CEO (see BioCentury Extra, July 27).Riedel said Aptinyx plans to raise additional funds through a series A round over the next several months.Aptinyx has a pipeline of oral small molecule NMDA receptor modulators to treat disorders including traumatic brain injury, neuropathic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder and epilepsy. The company will also collaborate with Allergan to discover and develop NMDA receptor modulators. Allergan has the right to in-license a select number of candidates. Financial terms of the collaboration were undisclosed.The Aptinyx team includes CSO Joseph Moskal, formerly CSO at Naurex; and CBO Ashish Khanna, who was Naurex's VP of corporate development. Aptinyx also named Torsten Madsen CMO. Madsen was CMO and VP of U.S. drug development at H. Lundbeck A/S (CSE:LUN).