Acute Pain
Acute pain is considered to be a type of pain that is relatively short in duration, generally occurring following injury, including surgery, and resolving while healing is underway. This type of pain is known to be sharp and severe.
Within the acute pain market, Cytogel is particularly focused on developing CYT-1010 in the intravenous form for post-operative pain:
- There are an estimated 53 million surgeries per year in the US that require drugs for post-op pain
- Over half of patients report inadequate pain relief
- Severe respiratory depression associated with morphine and many traditional treatments limits their use in this setting
In the journal, Anesthesiology, in 2010, an expert noted that postoperative respiratory failure is “the third most common patient safety-related adverse event affecting the Medicare population in US hospitals… and that 50% of postoperative respiratory failure events involved patients receiving opioid analgesia."
Acute Pain - In animal studies endomorphins reduce recovery time, in days, from inflammatory and post-operative pain by up to 75%.
In pre-clinical studies CYT-1010 does not produce neural inflammation that leads to prolonged pain sensation.
Chronic Pain
Chronic pain encompasses pain that does not naturally resolve or recurs without new injury and generally includes the following pain states: arthritis pain, cancer pain, low back pain, fibromyalgia, migraine, neuropathic pain and others.
- 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from chronic pain.
- More than 100 million people in the US require chronic pain medicine
Based on pre-clinical studies, CYT-1010 should also be effective for treating chronic pain in humans. Cytogel has completed early research on the development of an oral formulation of CYT-1010 for use in chronic therapy, and more research will continue as we move forward.
Anti-Inflammatory Effects
In non-clinical studies CYT-1010 has demonstrated substantial anti-inflammatory activity.
The degree of anti-inflammatory effect with CYT-1010 was similar to that seen with high dose corticosteroids. This benefit could provide an important alternative for patients who are experiencing significant pain with an inflammatory component such as those with advanced rheumatoid arthritis, or those patients who have suffered trauma or have undergone invasive surgery as well as other procedures.
It is especially important because other treatments, such as with opioids, do not inhibit inflammation and may actually produce a degree of inflammation (pro-inflammatory), which can result in extending the duration of the pain state.