SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 06, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Incannex Healthcare Limited (Nasdaq: IXHL) (ASX: IHL), (‘Incannex’ or the ‘Company’) a pharmaceutical company developing proprietary medicinal cannabinoid products and psychedelic medicine therapies for unmet medical needs, is pleased to announce the filing of a provisional patent application directed to the use of IHL-42X for the treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (‘OSA’).
With this latest provisional patent application, Incannex intends to pursue additional patent protection for its IHL-42X clinical program, consistent with the Company’s ongoing commercial strategy to accrue a patent position across the development, manufacture, and use of the Company’s drug candidates.
IHL-42X was designed to combine two drugs, tetrahydrocannabinol (‘THC’ or ‘dronabinol’) and acetazolamide, with therapeutic effects on OSA that act via different mechanisms. Acetazolamide induces metabolic acidosis, raises the drive to breathe and reduces the sensitivity of body system that controls breathing, which helps to reduce the incidence and severity of apnoeas and hypopnoeas. Dronabinol is believed to activate muscles in the upper airway during sleep, thereby reducing incidence of airway collapse. Incannex previously discovered that the two drugs act synergistically to reduce the Apnea Hypopnea Index (AHI) in patients with OSA.
Incannex engaged Dr Brad Edwards, Associate Professor of Physiology at Monash University, to further assess the polysomnography data from the Company’s Phase 2 proof-of-concept clinical trial that investigated the effect of IHL-42X on OSA.
Dr Edwards is an expert on mechanisms of OSA, having contributed to the development of a method to characterise the underlying causes (or endotypes) of OSA. Working in collaboration with the Phase 2 trial’s principal investigator, Dr Jen Walsh and her team at the University of Western Australia, Dr Edwards and his team have characterised the effects of IHL-42X on the different endotypes of OSA.
