A compound — one of 27 million screened in a library of potential new drugs — reversed four types of chronic pain in animal studies, according to new research led by NYU College of Dentistry’s Pain Research Center and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The small molecule, which binds to an inner region of a calcium channel to indirectly regulate it, outperformed gabapentin without troublesome side effects, providing a promising candidate for treating pain.
Calcium channels play a central role in pain signaling, in part through the release of neurotransmitters such as glutamate and GABA — “the currency of the pain signal,” according to Rajesh Khanna, director of the NYU Pain Research Center and professor of molecular pathobiology at NYU Dentistry. The Cav2.2 (or N-type) calcium channel is the target for three clinically available drugs,…
