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ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

Quartet: Orchestrating pain relief

Why investors put $17M in Quartet for novel pain mechanism

November 10, 2014 8:00 AM UTC

Quartet Medicine Inc. is developing inhibitors against two enzymes in the peripheral nervous system based on genetic findings that support a novel mechanism for ameliorating chronic neuropathic pain that could be complementary to centrally acting therapies. The company hopes early clinical biomarker data showing the molecules reduce synthesis of the target protein can quickly attract potential partners.

Quartet is based on a discovery made by company co-founder Clifford Woolf and colleagues at Harvard Medical School that, in a small portion of the population, a specific mutation leads to decreased levels of tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) in peripheral nerves, which in turn correlates with a reduction in neuropathic pain in response to injury or inflammation...