Nerve growth factor could yield new breed of painkillers

As its name suggests, nerve growth factor plays an important role in the development, growth and maintenance of nerves. However, inhibiting nerve nerve growth factor also shows promising prospects as an analgesic.

This fact means drugs that target nerve growth factor could open a new field of pain relief medication, says market analysts, Datamonitor, in a newly released report, Stakeholder Opinion: Targeting Nerve Growth Factor for Pain Therapy.

Datamonitor has identified five molecules at various stages of clinical development, with the most advanced pipeline candidate Pfizer’s monoclonal antibody, tanezumab, which could launch as early as 2012.

This could be the first biological treatment of pain and follows an industry-wide trend towards developing more complex and targeted therapies.

However, phase II trials of tanezumab have shown adverse side effects including headache, upper respiratory tract infection, paresthesia (abnormal sensations), hypoesthesia (decreased sensations) and arthralgia (joint aches).

Importantly, there is a risk of reproductive toxicology issues, which may lead to a black box warning for use in pregnant women.

Furthermore, nerve growth factor inhibitors are biological products, which increases the cost of development and manufacture. According to Dr Trung Huynh, healthcare analyst at Datamonitor, this might make them inappropriate as first-line therapeutics, but they may still have a role as last-line treatments for people who have not responded to other first line drugs.