femoxetine femoxetine 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. femoxetineclinical dataroutes ofadministrationoralatc codenonelegal statuslegal status in general: uncontrolled pharmacokinetic dataelimination half-life7–27 hoursidentifiers iupac name (3r,4s)-3--1-methyl-4-phenyl-piperidine cas number59859-58-4 ypubchem cid3012003chemspider2280941 yunii8y719zlx8cchemblchembl94739 ycomptox dashboard (epa)dtxsid70208576 chemical and physical dataformulac20h25no2molar mass311.425 g·mol−13d model (jsmol)interactive image smiles o(c1ccc(oc)cc1)c3(c2ccccc2)ccn(c)c3 inchi inchi=1s/c20h25no2/c1-21-13-12-20(16-6-4-3-5-7-16)17(14-21)15-23-19-10-8-18(22-2)9-11-19/h3-11,17,20h,12-15h2,1-2h3/t17-,20-/m1/s1 ykey:ojsftalxcykkfq-yljyhzdgsa-n y (verify) both femoxetine and paroxetine were invented in the 1970s. jørgen anders christensen's name is on the patents and jorgen buus-lassen's name is on the pharmacology paper. after ferrosan's acquisition, femoxetine died from neglect. in a separate patent, ferrosan stated that femoxetine could be used as an appetite suppressant, 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. analogs addition of the para-fluoro atom results in a different compound that is a hybrid of femoxetine & paroxetine named fg 7080, which has a separate patent. according to the patent tables, incorporation of the fluorine atom potentiated the 5-ht affinity considerably. pfizer made some similar analogs e.g. a viloxazine type of catechol ether is used, but 4-phenyl instead of based on a morpholine ring. nnc-63-0780. binds to orl1 instead of sert. nnc 09-0026