Description
Arena Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company founded in 1997 and located in San Diego, California. The company has small molecule drugs in development for possible clinical utility in multiple therapeutic areas. The company’s most advanced investigational clinical programs are ralinepag (formerly APD811) in testing for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), etrasimod (formerly APD334) in evaluation for inflammatory indications and APD371 for the treatment of pain associated with Crohn’s disease. In 2016 the company downsized and shifted its focus to developing new drugs currently being tested in clinical trials.
History
Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company founded in 1997 and located in San Diego, California. Arena focused on discovering drugs that act on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The company developed technology it called Constitutively Activated Receptor Technology (CART) that identified drug leads targeting GPCRs and other classes of receptors to. CART was used to identify drug leads able to act as receptor inhibitors to decrease a biological response or act as receptor activators to increase a biological response.
- In January 2000, Arena entered into a collaborative agreement with Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. to validate up to 13 drug targets.
- In April 2000, Arena entered into a research collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company focused on the endocrine and central nervous systems.
- In May 2000, Arena entered into a research collaboration with Taisho Pharmaceutical Co. focused on several GPCRs selected by Taisho in therapeutic areas of interest.
