Translation of drug effects from experimental models of neuropathic pain and analgesia to humans

Evaluation of the antihyperalgesic effect of tapentadol in two human evoked pain models – the TapCapMentho pilot trial

“…Tapentadol (immediate release) in comparison to placebo was able to reduce laserevoked potential responses and spontaneous pain in healthy volunteers using the UVB and topical capsaicin model within a randomized trial [28] . Importantly, tapentadol also reduced symptoms and signs of neuropathic pain assessed by the PainDetect Questionnaire and NPSI questionnaire [10] .…”

“…Target engagement was additionally confirmed by the adverse events, reported after the tapendatol intake only. It remains unclear whether increased dosages of tapentadol might affect experimental hyperalgesia since concentration-effect relationships have been found to be necessary for translational research using human evoked pain models [28] . Indeed, IR tapentadol in comparison to placebo was able to reduce laser-evoked potential responses and spontaneous pain in healthy volunteers using the UVB and topical capsaicin model in a randomized trial [36] .…”

Reprint of: Highthroughtput analysis of behavior for drug discovery

“…Lack of translation between preclinical and clinical research continues to be a challenging problem in this area as in other neuroscience domains Munafo et al, 2014;Taneja et al, 2012). Most of the preclinical models of neuropathic pain that use evoked thermal or mechanical single endpoints provide poor predictive validity as the majority of human clinical pain is considered spontaneous in nature.…”

A Pain Research Agenda for the 21st Century

“…82,88 Why has this happened? There are fiscal and governmental policy issues that unquestionably have played an important role; however, a negative outlook on the therapeutic development for chronic pain has undoubtedly taken hold in some circles 8,90 (for an opposing view, see 69 ). Despite this, a recent survey of neurologists found that the most transformative drug of the past decade was the triptan class because of its profound impact on the treatment of the world’s most common neurologic disorder, migraine headache.…”

“…8,69,90 Despite notable failures in translation (which occur in all fields of biomedicine), 20,29,47 there have indeed been successes. 54,85 Translational research should be bidirectional, with basic science informing clinical pain research concerning mechanisms of treatment effects, and clinical practice and research providing the clinical questions and definitive determinations of patient benefit.…”