Visceral Pain Management
Narcotics is an attractive opportunity for pain management :
- An $8 billion market: Narcotics such as opioids represent one third of the total pain market, with a growth rate expected to increase significantly over the next decade. Two of the top-five products within the total pain market are narcotics with sales above $1b for each.
- A higher probability of success: The average success rate for phase 1-to-market drug development is 9% for all drugs, however it is 17% for pain relief drugs.
- A shorter development time: For post-operative pain, the completion of clinical phases 1 and 2 is significantly shorter than most other therapeutic areas.
The main drawbacks of existing narcotics are undesirable effects, more specifically constipation and tolerance. Constipation has a direct impact on health costs for post-operative recovery and can be life-threatening when opioids are used to reduce chronic pain. Tolerance means that repeated intakes result in higher doses to get an equivalent effect, eventually reaching toxic doses.
Neorphys scientists discover and develop the Neorphines, a novel family of drug candidates which are more potent than morphine while reducing these restricting side effects, in a growing number of therapeutic areas, such as acute pain, chronic pain, orthopaedic pain and dental pain.
A major improvement is that Neorphines exhibit a low impact on the gastrointestinal transit. This is why NEO1509 and NEO1528 are primarily developed to address respectively acute and chronic visceral pain.
Other pain segments are also considered as a potential extension of the current pipeline.
| Compound | Application | Features | End of 2008 |
End of 2010 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neo1509 | Visceral pos-operative pain |
|
Preclinical | Phase 2 |
| Neo1528 | Visceral chronic pain |
|
Animal POC | Phase 1 |
| Neo1507 | Orthopaedic pain (partnership) |
|
Animal POC | Licensed- out |
| Neo15xx | Pain | Based on a different metabolite of morphine | Discovery | Preclinical |
Neorphines are derived from natural metabolites of morphine and are spread over proprietary chemical series, so as to maximise synergies in the discovery effort and to increase its odds of success (patent FR-06/54247, filed 12 October 2006, PCT 12 October 2007).
The main improvements of Neorphines compared to other opioids including morphine are:
- Long lasting effect (8 to 10 times longer than morphine)
- Recovery of normal gastro-intestinal transit while under analgesia
- Low risk of tolerance
- Activity demonstrated by several routes of administration including oral
- Safety window higher than 100 by oral administration
- High solubility and stability in water
