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chronic pain

Acute pain is typically induced by a noxious stimulus or tissue damage and normally resolves by itself. If pain persists more than 3 months, despite the initial stimulus or tissue damage being removed or healed, it is considered chronic pain. Common types of chronic pain include musculoskeletal pain (e.g. lower back pain, arthritic joint pain) and neuropathic pain (e.g. diabetic pain, post-herpetic neuralgia).

Chronic pain is one of the most frequent reasons for seeking medical care, but pain management, including pharmaceutical intervention, is often inadequate. On top of that, existing pain medication can come with serious side effects, and opioids in particular have been associated with a high abuse liability. Given the enormous socioeconomic burden and the lack of an adequate treatment, chronic pain still is a highly unmet medical need.

Based on the increasing evidence of the neuro-immune interaction playing a crucial role in chronic pain, Synerkine Pharma is developing SK-01 as a treatment that induces long-term resolution of pain. SK-01 is progressing steadily towards the clinic with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a severe chronic pain indication, as the lead indication.

CIPN

Many of the commonly used cancer treatments have severe side effects. One of the common neurotoxic side effects is chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). Because of the severity as well as poor reversibility of CIPN, it often leads to the termination of the chemotherapy treatment with significant impact on survival outcomes. Because the chemotherapy-induced effects on peripheral sensory neurons are often persistent and cause debilitating symptoms such as pain, balance problems, and numbness, they can have a long-term impact on the quality of life of cancer survivors.

Pro-inflammatory cytokines play a crucial role in the initiation and progression of CIPN and both IL-4 and IL-13 have been shown to be part in the endogenous resolution of CIPN symptoms. Synerkine Pharma is therefore developing SK-02, a novel fusion protein combining IL-4 and IL-13, for this indication. Initial data have not only shown an analgesic effect of this Synerkine, but also a neuroprotective or even disease-modifying effect, which makes this approach highly promising.