Cannabinoids in Pain
There is an urgent need for new, licensed, and effective treatments and regulatory agencies are supporting efforts to address this particularly in severe, but rare, pain disorders, catalogued as orphan diseases.
Many millions of people are living with debilitating, chronic pain every day that is either unresolved by or is resistant to current treatments, leaving many of them dependent on opioids and the consequences of these. In the US alone, this number is estimated to be 50 million with 60,000 opioid-related deaths in the US in 2020.[1]
Current pain treatments consist predominantly of opioids, anti-inflammatory, anti-convulsant and anti-depressant drugs. Many of the medicines used to treat pain are not licensed in pain.
It is known that the Endocannabinoid system (ECS) plays an important role in processing pain and that modulation particularly of CB2 in the ECS can alleviate pain.
It is our intention that each cannabinoid medicine we develop will serve to resolve, not just one, but several pain conditions including rare conditions. Our first compound, OCT461201, a highly selective CB2 agonist, is now in clinical trials with target indications of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) and pain associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
