BPR Pain Hour: Repurposing Drugs for Treatment of Chronic Pain

3-4 pm AEST, Tuesday 5 September 2023 (via Zoom)

The purpose of our Basic Pain Research Special Interest Group (BPR SIG) is to share, improve, and promote scientific knowledge and understanding of the mechanisms of nociception and pain across all levels of investigation, from molecular and cellular analyses to preclinical or clinical studies. This forum will provide an informal platform to promote and share our research and insights, from ECRs (including students) and senior colleagues.

Session 8: Repurposing Drugs for Treatment of Chronic Pain

Summary

In recent years, drug repurposing has gained considerable attention in the drug discovery process. It involves establishing new therapeutic uses of already known drugs. This session will consider how we can repurpose existing drugs, with known safety profiles, to treat a variety of conditions that are accompanied by pain. The first speaker, Shane Cronin, will discuss recent work that involved screening of 1000 targetannotated, FDA-approved medications, to identify several drugs that interact with BH4, a metabolite of sensory neurons that is involved in neuropathic and inflammatory pain. The second speaker, Aeson Chang, will discuss work that led to the repurposing of Beta-blockers for the treatment of cancer, and how the effects of chemotherapy on sympathetic nerve signaling has informed identification of better combinations for drug repurposing in the cancer context. These talks will both inform strategies for maximising the benefits of existing pharmaceutical compounds in the development of novel treatments for chronic pain.

The invited speakers:

Shane Cronin, Assistant Professor, Medical University of Vienna, Austria

Title: Targeting BH4 for pain relief

Aeson Chang, Lecturer and Postdoctoral Researcher, Cancer Neural Immune Laboratory, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Title: Novel Cancer Neuroscience Mechanism from Drug Repurposing

All are welcome to attend, including postgraduate students.

We look forward to seeing you there, please register here.