Alzheimer disease, epilepsy and sleep disorders related to the central nervous system (CNS) or brain disorders are among the priority current drug targets for research scientists in the field across the globe, according to Dr. Samba Reddy, North Carolina State University, San Diego, California.
However in the last one decade, the pace of drug discovery has been slow. In 1994, there were around 345 new chemical entities (NCEs) in the field and in 2005 the number shot up to 426. However, the drug discovery process for brain disorders, one of the fastest growing segments after cardiovascular and diabetes, has been time consuming.
In his address during the first session on Day 1 of the scientific programme titled ‘New Drug Development in Brain Disorders’, Dr. Samba Reddy stated that in 2003 out of the three drugs discovered one was for Alzheimer and in 2005, out of the four drugs discovered one was for sleep disorder. This indicates the interest and the on-going efforts in the development of drugs for CNS disorders.
There is a huge potential for drugs for brain disorder, which is fast catching up with the patient population globally. Making a prediction on the potential blockbuster drugs, Dr. Samba stated that depression and neuropathic pain are emerging as the possible areas for the development of blockbuster drugs.
Dr. Samba, who is working at the Neuropharmacology Lab at the Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences in California, stated that his on-going research on Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) is showing progress.
TLE is one of the most common forms of intractable epilepsy. Despite the availability of over 25 anti epileptic drugs, nearly 30 per cent of the 50 million epileptics globally have intractable seizures that do not respond to even the best available treatment.
The research indicated that neurosteroids inhibits the frequency and severity of spontaneous seizures, a hallmark of human epilepsy which do not occur in most animal models that are used to test drugs.
“We recently characterised the pilocarprine of TLE and a gabaergic neurosteroid exhibited the efficacy against spontaneous seizures in rat pilocarprine model. This is a major development for the drug development in epilepsy,” Dr. Samba concluded.
Prof. Rama Rao, NIPER Chandigarh spoke about G Protein coupled receptors in drug discovery. The session was chaired by Prof. Rao VS Vadlamudi, Bombay College of Pahrmacy, Mumbai.