Protein therapeutics for treatment of chronic and inflammatory pain

Chronic and inflammatory pain affect millions and new treatments are urgently needed. Despite significant investment in opioid safety and formulation, there is little exploration of drugs with fundamentally novel mechanisms of action. Our goal is to develop such medicines based on novel protein therapeutics that block pain sensation by silencing multiple NaV sodium channels in nociceptors. The failure of NaV1.7 inhibitors as analgesics1 suggests that blocking more than one channel will be necessary. We will therefore take an approach involving a multivalent scaffold and small proteins that inhibit several NaV channels with tunable selectivity and potency. Activity will be measured by differential screening against human iPSC-derived sensory, cortical, and motor neurons. Over a two year period we expect to achieve hit/lead generation for 10-30 distinct molecules and optimization of the most active for testing in animals.