Emerging therapies in clinical development and new contributions for neuropathic pain

Neuropathic pain is very challenging to manage because of the heterogeneity of aetiologies, symptoms, and underlying mechanisms. Conventional oral therapies have been limited by negative factors such as systemic side effects, drug-drug interactions, slow onset of action, the need for titration, multiple daily dosing, as well as the potential risk of addiction, dependence, withdrawal symptoms and abuse. Therefore, new therapeutic perspectives are justified. New drugs that act on different therapeutic targets are currently in preclinical development or in their first phases of clinical development. In this review, focus will be directed specifically on new pharmacological treatments for neuropathic pain for which clinical data are already available, including older and known drugs with new data on their anti-neuropathic activity.