Nothing has arguably hurt pharmaceutical investors and dealmakers quite so often and with such force as novel pain drug development failures. As a result, a once hot field has gone cold. Despite setbacks, great strides have been made in understanding the complex biology of pain. Scientists have discovered numerous new pain pathway targets with the potential for designing effective agents with fewer off-target effects. Improvements that make preclinical studies more predictive of clinical success are also opening up new opportunities. At the same time, drug developers now understand better how to design drug trials that can segment patient populations to demonstrate therapeutic efficacy more precisely, potentially reducing placebo effects and paving the way for an era of personalized pain medicine.
By Marc Wortman
The flame of pain drug development has proven alluring to the pharmaceutical industry
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