The Use of a Multi-modal Pain Test Battery in Early Phase Clinical Drug Development

Human evoked pain models can help to establish the analgesic potential of novel analgesic compounds. We integrated a range of mechanistically different pain tasks such that they can be used as a screening tool for the early drug development of potential analgesics. The "PainCart" yields a unique and reproducible profile of analgesic effects that can be considered a biomarker of the analgesic potential of a drug. The PainCart is currently used in early phase clinical drug studies for dose finding and go no-go decisions prior to phase 2.