Grant: Idea to Innovation

Chronic pain afflicts over 100 million North Americans and the current treatments are only moderately effective. In particular, opioids are commonly subscribed for this purpose, which has resulted in widespread problems with abuse and addiction. Moreover, current common therapy requires daily oral administration, leading to potential issues of patient compliance, overdose, and abuse. The objective of the proposed work is development of an implantable non-opioid drug depot that provides at least 4 weeks of delivery at therapeutic levels. The drug candidate chosen for these studies is gabapentin enacarbil, which is used clinically to treat chronic neuropathic pain. The gabapentin will be incorporated into a novel polymer formulation, for which we have filed patent protection. Discussions with potential industrial partners has made it clear that a necessary next step in the commercial development of our polymer is an in vivo demonstration of efficacy. As such, we propose to demonstrate the ability of our new polymer formulation to provide suitable drug delivery in a rat model.