Recent trends in neuropathic pain patents

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Neuropathic pain (NP) is one of the most important health problems faced nowadays. NP is a chronic disease that cannot be treated like other pain conditions because it is developed from a nerve injury that evolves into a permanent dysfunction of the central and/or peripheral nervous system. Therefore, it involves the participation of several systems and should be viewed as a multi-factorial disease that needs a whole new pharmacological strategy in order to achieve the desired pain relief.

Areas covered: The Espacenet site was used as the main source in order to perform the patent research for NP treatment. This review covers the patents with relevant approaches for NP treatment from 2014 until today.

Expert opinion: Our patent research has shown that there is not a consensus approach to treat NP in any of its forms. In our opinion, the approach regarding NP needs to be like cancer’s approach. As there are different types of cancer and different ways to treat them, the same needs to be done for NP. Currently, there are several promising targets, which corroborates that this is a wide-open research area. For these reasons, neuropathic pain is a therapeutic field full of potential for innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Neuropathic pain
• chronic pain
• drug design
• pain treatment
• Multifactorial disease

Article highlights

• Neuropathic pain can manifest in many different ways, just like cancer, and should be addressed in the same way, i.e. different types of neuropathic pain should have different types of therapies;

• Neuropathic pain is a multifactorial disease and that is why multi-targeting, at least in theory, should yield better therapeutic results than mono-target therapy;

• Some targets, like ion channels, present many side effects associated with their blockade and/or lack of selectivity. One way to overcome this seems to be the modulation of the target indirectly. It was demonstrated for the Cav2.2 channels via the inhibition of the collapsing response mediator protein 2 (CRMP-2);

• Rethinking the approach regarding old targets might prove useful. The dimer strategy employed with opioids is a great example;

• In the same context, revisiting old drugs might point towards new targets or at least new promising associations, exemplified by the meloxicam + pregabalin case.

This box summarizes key points contained in the article.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.