Empowered Patient Podcast Targeting Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels to Treat Hypersensitivity to Pain with John Mulcahy SiteOne Therapeutics
John Mulcahy, President and CEO of SiteOne Therapeutics, is developing new therapies to treat hypersensitivity disorders. Their approach focuses on targeting specific voltage-gated sodium channels. Their drug candidates are designed to treat acute pain, as well as hypersensitivity developed as a result of chronic pain. They have recently received an NIH HEAL grant to explore their drug candidate that targets one subtype of the sodium channel as a non-opioid therapeutic potential for treating different pain conditions.
John explains, "At SiteOne, we're focused on a family of targets known as the voltage-gated sodium ion channels. These are proteins, ion channels, that are involved in transmitting pain signals from the site of an injury, like earlier we said, the skin or a joint, to the central nervous system, so to your spinal cord, to your brain. At SiteOne, we're basically focused on drugs that potentially dampen those signals. It kind of tunes down that pain signal before it ever reaches the central nervous system. So it's a very different approach compared to either the NSAIDs or the opioids."
"We're very excited to partner with NIH and the National Institute on Drug Abuse on this program. A little bit of background on the HEAL Initiative. So HEAL stands for Helping End Addiction Long-term, and it's a major federal initiative with multiple agencies involved. The goal is to aggressively advance scientific solutions to the opioid crisis."
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