Cambridge Laboratories and Temmler Pharma launch Nitoman

Cambridge Laboratories has announced that its German distribution partner Temmler Pharma has launched the dopamine depletion agent Nitoman.

The agent was licensed by Cambridge to Temmler Pharma in 2006 with the intention of targeting the German and Austrian markets and building on the launch of the product in France.

Nitoman received approval from the Bundesinstitut fur Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte (BfArM) in January and Temmler Pharma will now pursue the same approval in Austria.

“We are excited by the speed at which Nitoman has been launched in Germany following its approval,” said Mark Evans, chief executive of Cambridge.

“The commercialisation of Nitoman is another key milestone achieved by Cambridge in the development of our [central nervous system] product portfolio.”

Nitoman, which is also known as Xenazine in the US and a number of other markets, uses tetrabenazine, which Cambridge found to significantly reduce the chorea burden of patients with Huntingdon’s disease in a study published in February last year.

Tertrabenazene works by inhibiting vesicular monoamine transporter two. Xenazine depletes the “stores of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline” within nerve cells in the brain, according to Cambridge, making it an effective treatment for Huntingdon’s.