Research
Innovative Treatment of Chemotherapy-Induced Painful Peripheral Neuropathy in Cancer
Since the advances in chemotherapy, the five-year overall survival rate has improved over the years and is currently more than 80% for many types of cancer. Unfortunately, chemotherapy drugs have adverse effects such as peripheral neuropathy (so-called chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, or CIPN). CIPN is a debilitating condition that negatively affects the quality of life of affected patients. The drugs used to treat CIPN, such as opioids, antiepileptics, and antidepressants, are often ineffective, and/or have profound adverse effects, such as constipation, sedation, addiction, respiratory depression and even death. Furthermore, nonpharmacologic treatments such as transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), acupuncture and yoga have shown mixed results.
Recently, we proposed a treatment for CIPN by introducing a potentially effective noninvasive electrocutaneous nerve stimulation technique called scrambler therapy (ST). Given that the clinical presentation of CIPN in patients, we believe that ST is a promising novel treatment option for patients of all ages with CIPN (Curr Opin Anaesthesiol. 1;34(6):768-773). Thus, it is worth investigating this novel treatment further. Our central hypothesis is that ST significantly reduces pain and improves neuropathy, physical function, and quality of life (QoL) of cancer patients with CIPN. The overall objective of this proposal is to show that ST may be a valuable alternative to pharmacologic management of CIPN that can effectively improve pain and neuropathy and improve QoL for cancer patients with CIPN. We expect to see significant improvement in pain and other symptom burden of CIPN in patients.
Development of new drugs for chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain in animals
Currently, CIPN is difficult to treat by widely used pain medicines including tricyclic antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and so. However, most of these treatments are often ineffective , , and/or have profound adverse effects. In our previous research, we found that 1) the analgesic and preventive effects of reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavengers including phenyl N-t-butylnitrone and tempol, 2) analgesic effects of phosphodiesterase type 4 (PDE4) inhibitors including pentoxifylline and rolipram, and 3) analgesic effects of losartan in CINP model. Recently, we found the anti-cancer chemotherapeutic drugs, such as Wnt blockers showed preventive and analgesic effects in CINP model (Neurotherapeutics. 2021 Jan;18(1):601-614). The long-term goal is to find new mechanisms and even drugs for all types of neuropathic pain, which if successful, will result in changes in the clinic.