Patent Update Central & Peripheral Nervous Systems: Neurokinin receptor antagonists

Abstract

The area of neurokinin (NK) research has seen an explosion of interest following the identification of the first non-peptide antagonists. Since then nearly every major pharmaceutical company has reported work in this area, describing a wide variety of different chemical series. The early preclinical models suggest a number of potential clinical utilities including analgesia, anxiety, arthritis, asthma, emesis, migraine and schizophrenia. This patent update addresses the trends in the patenting of NK₁, NK₂ and NK₃ receptor antagonists between 1990 and 1995, focussing on advances made since the last review in 1993, and identifies and evaluates the key compounds under the research spotlight.