Therapeutic Areas
Neuropathic pain
Neuropathic pain (NP) is a result of a direct damage to any part of the Nervous System following trauma, infections, metabolic changes and certain medical treatments including drugs. Contrary to inflammatory pain, NP does not serve the sentinel function of alerting about a malfunctioning organ. NP often becomes chronic and is described as burning, stabbing, shooting, or electric-shock-like; it can be continuous or paroxysmal coming in bouts. NP still represents an important Unmet Medical Need as generally more than 50% of patients do not obtain satisfactory relief because of suboptimal efficacy and/or poor tolerability. Some subtypes of NP – such as complex regional pain syndromes, phantom limb, and chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy – are totally refractory to available treatments. Guidelines for the treatment of NP have been published (Attal et al., 2010; Dworkin et al., 2007).
Substantial progress has been made in the understanding of how NP is generated. Overdrive of one of the glutamate receptors, known as NMDA receptor (NMDAR), is at the basis of the spiral of increasing pain perception (the so called wind-up). Non-selective NMDAR antagonists have failed in the past due to a wide range of adverse events.
Neurotune has identified novel and subtype selective functional antagonists of NMDAR belonging to the racetam class, as powerful anti-neuropathic pain compounds effective in a broad spectrum of animal models of NP conditions. For references, see the Literature page.
Two molecules were selected for clinical development.