There are substantial market opportunities for better treatments for moderate-to-severe chronic pain, driven by demand from patients and clinicians for new products that produce more effective analgesia with fewer side effects than current therapies.

Unresolved pain is a major cause of morbidity and loss of quality of life throughout the world. The incidence, direct cost and opportunity cost of moderate to severe pain are all expected to increase significantly over the next decade and beyond as populations age. Pain may arise as a direct consequence of disease processes, such as cancer and arthritis, or may be a side effect of particular disease treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

CNSBio is pursuing an efficient, systematic approach to the development of new combination therapies, initially for the relief of chronic pain.

The therapeutic utility of drugs currently used for the treatment of moderate-to-severe chronic pain is constrained by the occurrence of dose limiting-side effects that limit the efficacy of the drugs for the long term relief of pain. Combination therapies which exploit functional synergies between the actions of two drugs offer patients suffering from chronic pain the prospect of greater efficacy without a concomitant increase in drug induced-side effects, as each component drug may be used at doses lower than those that would normally be required for a therapeutic effect.