The unmet need for effective treatments in chronic pain with minimal side effects and a long-lasting therapeutic benefit is large.
There is already good clinical evidence from the use of native neurotoxins that botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) can have analgesic activity, although the utility of this is limited by the toxicity of the native neurotoxins and their potent neuromuscular weakening. The engineering BoNTs that target nociceptive (pain sensing) neurons enables Syntaxin to develop more effective treatments for this all too prevalent condition.
Syntaxin's therapeutic proteins affect pain in the following way:
Our experimental data has demonstrated that retargeting clostridial neurotoxin proteases to pain fibres leading to inhibition of pain transmitter release is effective and has the potential to generate analgesic proteins with a prolonged duration of action suited to the treatment of chronic pain.
In collaboration with our licence partner Allergan, Syntaxin has taken this work forward to generate recombinant proteins. A candidate from this programme has been identified that is able to produce potent and long acting analgesia in a range of animal models of chronic pain. An IND has been approved for this programme and Phase I clinical trials are currently ongoing.