Patent Update Central & Peripheral Nervous Systems: Neurokinin receptor antagonists

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.