New drugs to reduce pain

María del Carmen Ruiz Cantero

Universitat de Barcelona - Fundació Bosch i Gimpera, Spain

Pain is a major public health problem. One in five people in Europe live with some form of chronic pain that impairs their quality of life and has considerable socio-economic impact, as well as high associated medical costs. Acute pain can also be relevant. Following surgery, more than half of all patients experience moderate or severe pain in the immediate postoperative period, despite receiving analgesic treatment (mainly opioid-based). Generally speaking, existing analgesics have very limited efficacy and significant side effects in more than half of patients. Clearly, then, safer, more effective and non-addictive therapies are needed.

In recent studies, the researchers found that interaction with two biological targets -two proteins involved in the onset and maintenance of pain – produces a very potent analgesic effect in several animal models of pain. The strength of these results led the researchers to develop new dual molecules capable of interacting with both targets, obtaining very promising results in pathological models of pain.

The aim of the project is to find a new treatment that can significantly reduce pain and so improve patients' lives.

• Enrique J. Cobos del Moral, Universidad de Granada, Spain

• Emanuele Amata and Agostino Marrazzo, University of Catania, Italy