Circuit logic

BlackThorn Therapeutics Inc. has begun the first of a series of studies that will test whether it can solve a tough problem in neurological drug development: the tendency of heterogeneity among patients with the same clinical diagnosis to mask the effects of compounds in clinical trials.

The company has developed an informatics platform called INFORM to identify the neural circuits that drive neurobehavioral symptoms, select targets expressed within those circuits, and identify patient populations likely to respond to therapies against those targets...