Trends and targets for treatment of pain, a pharmaceutical industry perspective.

Abstract

My task is to present where the pharmaceutical industry is today with regards to developing new therapies for the treatment of pain. Having been given this opportunity on a the day when Torsten Gordh Senior celebrates his 90th birthday is a great honor. Since his pioneering work in the area of anesthesia several steps forward have been taken for the patients in finding different and improved opportunities to treat their pain. It is also fair to say that in comparison to other therapeutic areas, not many principally new pharmaceuticals have been established in several years. Still, morphine and variants of opioids with novel delivery systems and modified NSAIDs, all with moderately improved side effect profiles, are still dominating for moderate to severe pain. For the patients responding poorly to morphine and NSAIDs, drugs developed for other indications, e.g. epilepsy and depression, are continuously tried with incomplete success and problems with unwanted side-effects remain. This means that there is still a huge medical need to be met and that the pharmaceutical industry must meet that challenge together with academic groups. Fortunately, it is true that pain is becoming more recognized as an area with a great medical need and that the pharmaceutical industry is increasing its efforts in this area.