Pharmacotherapy options for managing chemotherapy-induced peripheral neurotoxicity

Prevention and treatment of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neurotoxicity (CIPN) are clinically-relevant unmet needs. Despite extensive efforts at the preclinical and clinical levels, no effective pharmacological interventions are available, and this unsatisfactory situation reflects a combination of methodological issues and a lack of effectiveness of the tested drugs.

This non-systematic, but unbiased review is based on published papers available in PubMed and screened using the broad search string [chemotherapy (and) neuropathy (and) treatment] to analyze the reported data. Subsequently, the same search was performed in ClinicalTrials.gov to assess the trend of new clinical studies.

From the analysis of the most recently published clinical studies and of the ongoing registered trials it seems that drug-based treatment attempts are being overwhelmed by non-pharmacological studies, in most cases based on weak supporting hypothesis. Among the possible strategies important to restore a prominent role for drug-based clinical trials, increased knowledge on CIPN pathophysiology, more effective translation of preclinical results into clinical setting, improvement in CIPN assessment and the identification of subjects at high-risk for more severe CIPN are important areas to concentrate investigational efforts.