Drug Candidate’s ‘Inside Job’ Obstructs Pain Channel, Avoids Side Effects

NYU College of Dentistry’s Pain Research Center has developed a compound, CBD3063, that reversed forms of chronic pain in animal tests. Current pain easing drugs gabapentin and pregabalin have serious side effects and low efficacy, hence the development of new therapies is imperative. CBD3063 was found through a computational screening of 27 million compounds. Tests recorded the amount of calcium that entered the Cav2.2 calcium channel, critical in pain signalling. In lab tests CBD3063 compared favourably to current treatments such as gabapentin and may have fewer side effects.