Hi folks,
I recently read an article about medical research in pain management :
They talk about this “Nav 1.7” channel as being the current target for drug therapies in pain management.
You can read more about it here:
I did some more research to see if this is being researched for TN pain medication and sure enough there was a medication that just finished going through clinical trials, the “BIIB074” molecule was being investigated for this purpose.
Here is the clinical trial link:
Initially I believe a company called “Convergence” was working on this, and they later got bought by Biogen Pharma.
Anyhoo, here is the current result of the clinical trials:
http://thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(17)30005-4/fulltext
The paper is not open for downloading but you can read the abstract, and the conclusion is that:
“The primary endpoint of treatment failure was not significantly lower in the BIIB074 group than in the placebo group. However, our findings provide a basis for continued investigation of BIIB074 in patients with trigeminal neuralgia in future clinical trials.”
I think we should be hopeful. Even though this BIIB074 seems to have failed, there is a lot of research activity going on in addressing pain via the Nav 1.7 channel.
I forgot to mention, this is is something for us to be excited about since a Nav1.7-selective, state-dependent sodium-channel blocker, such as BIIB074 could potentially be more effective with less side effects than the current medications used for TN.
There is great research being conducted that has huge implication for us!
Hope yall having a great weekend.
H