What is neuropatic pain?
Pain is a negative feeling associated with damage to the body’s tissues and is crucial to survival. Sometimes damage to the tissues from trauma or some diseases, for example, viral infection, shingles and diabetes, results in neuropathic pain that does not resolve, and the pain becomes chronic. This has no survival value and, indeed, results in a real reduction in sufferers’ quality of life.
Focus on allodynia
PharmNovo initially focuses on neuropathic pain with allodynia. Allodynia is a distressing part of neuropathic pain states. It is pain on the skin from something that shouldn’t be painful. This makes simple day-to-day activities, such as getting dressed, very unpleasant, and this has a negative impact on sufferers’ quality of life.
Allodynia is common in neuropathic pain states such as shingles, diabetic neuropathy, physical injury to nerves and migraine. Existing treatments are largely ineffective, but the drug candidate PN6047 from PharmNovo, blocks allodynia in animal models, and its potential in the human condition is clear.
The drug candidate is being developed for neuropathic pain in general, but by focusing the study on peripheral nerve pain with mechanical allodynia, a semi-quantitative way of measuring effect can be used, which increases the likelihood of demonstrating efficacy.
