Advancing precision pain medicines to the clinic - Abstract
Chronic pain is pain that persists past the normal time of healing. 1.5 billion people worldwide
suffer from chronic pain and this number continues to increase as the elderly population grows,
the prevalence of diabetes rises, and cancer survival rates improve. Chronic pain not only
severely impacts daily quality of life for many patients, it also places a heavy socioeconomic
burden on society. Due to the limited number of efficacious treatment options available, chronic
pain is often treated with opioids despite the risk of addiction and side effects. Unfortunately, the
prescribing of opioids to treat chronic pain has largely fueled the current opioid epidemic.
Therefore, there is an urgent and clear unmet need for non-addictive alternative analgesics for
the treatment of chronic pain. The push to develop specific and non-addictive alternative
painkillers has brought interest to a particular sodium channel, NaV1.7, shown to be important for
pain sensing. Gain-of-function mutations in NaV1.7 are associated with rare disorder
characterized by intense pain, such as in patients with primary erythromelalgia and small-fiber
neuropathy. Additionally, NaV1.7 expression levels have been shown to increase in various pain
conditions. Conversely, loss-of function of NaV1.7 results in the inability to feel pain. Therefore,
inhibiting NaV1.7 can be an effective method of reducing pain and treating patients with chronic
pain. To accomplish this, we designed epigenetic modulators to repress expression of NaV1.7.
Rather than making permanent edits to the genome, these epigenetic modulators will transiently
inhibit expression of NaV1.7. By targeting NaV1.7 at the DNA-level, we can achieve specific and
long-lasting modulation of NaV1.7, with better pharmacokinetics prospects than RNA- and protein-
targeting approaches. This innovative approach has been shown to prevent and reverse acute
and chronic pain in five preclinical models of pain. Given the exciting novelty of this approach, in
addition to its high level of specificity and efficacy, the goal of this project is to support the business
development activities in finding a strong partner to bring this therapy to the millions of patients
that need non-addictive, efficacious, and long-lasting treatments for chronic pain.
