Femoxetine

Legal statusLegal status Pharmacokinetic dataElimination half-life7–27 hoursIdentifiersCAS NumberPubChem CIDChemSpiderUNIIChEMBLCompTox Dashboard (EPA)Chemical and physical dataFormulaC₂₀H₂₅NO₂Molar mass311.425 g·mol⁻¹3D model (JSmol)  (verify)

Femoxetine (INN; tentative brand name Malexil; developmental code name FG-4963) is a drug related to paroxetine that was being developed as an antidepressant by Danish pharmaceutical company Ferrosan in 1975 before acquisition of the company by Novo Nordisk. It acts as a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Development was halted to focus attention on paroxetine instead, as femoxetine could not be administered as a daily pill.

Both femoxetine and paroxetine were invented in the 1970s. Jørgen Anders Christensen's name is on the patents^[1][2] and Jorgen Buus-Lassen's name is on the pharmacology paper.^[3]

After Ferrosan's acquisition, femoxetine died from neglect.^[4]

In a separate patent, Ferrosan stated that Femoxetine could be used as an appetite suppressant,^[5] using ten times the dosage than for paroxetine, 300 - 400mg daily.

Femoxetine has the same stereochemical properties as Nocaine, another agent with a similar structure claimed to have been synthesized using arecoline as the starting alkaloid.^{[citation needed]}

Analogs

1. Addition of the para-fluoro atom results in a different compound that is a hybrid of femoxetine & paroxetine named FG 7080,^[6] which has a separate patent.^[7] According to the patent tables, incorporation of the fluorine atom potentiated the 5-HT affinity considerably.
2. Pfizer made some similar analogs^[8] E.g. a Viloxazine type of catechol ether is used, but 4-phenyl instead of based on a morpholine ring.
3. NNC-63-0780.^[9][10] binds to ORL1 instead of SERT.

• NNC 09-0026

See also

• Alaproclate
• Indalpine
• Zimelidine

References