AAN 2025 | Phase I trial findings on BHV-7000 for epilepsy and its potential in psychiatric disorders

BHV-7000 is a potassium channel activator and it works in a similar mechanism to an older medication that was approved for epilepsy before so it has some precedence behind it. Potassium channel activators are openers working for epilepsy. The potassium channel works on the M current and that’s part of the current that basically slows the cell down and stops the cells from having seizures and prevent them from having seizures. So it has potential for epilepsy because we know another medication similar to it has worked in the past. And there’s actually some evidence that it has efficacy for depression as well. And so we’re running those studies also. So our main Phase I trial, the multiple ascending dose trial, we were really excited by those results. We saw a really good tolerability profile. And we only had, actually, we didn’t have any subjects reporting somnolence during that study, which is pretty much unheard of. If you look at some of the most recent anti-seizure medications that were approved, they’re looking between 20 and 30% of subjects reporting in the same study, the same group of subjects reporting somnolence. So we were very excited by that. You know, the idea of a medication that can treat epilepsy, which is really important. We know treating seizures is important, but also quality of life is really important to patients. And so something that could treat seizures but not have a lot of those side effects that are associated with anti-seizure medications is what we’re excited about. We then actually did another study. It was an EEG study, basically looking at EEG frequencies before and after a dose of the medication. And we did see changes, dose-related changes in particularly the alpha frequencies, which is the frequency that’s more associated with kind of wake and kind of calm, relaxed situation, as opposed to delta frequencies, which we really didn’t see much of a change in, and that’s associated with somnolence and slowing and sleeping. So we feel, you know, the combination of that really does go along with our Phase I data, showing that no one reported somnolence, and we’re showing on the EEG, we’re not seeing the EEG changes that would be associated with somnolence too.

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