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Nav1.7 withholds its pain potential

Despite compelling genetic validation, drug developers are struggling to unlock the therapeutic promise of the Nav1.7 sodium channel as a pain target.
  1. Katie Kingwell
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Credit: Stocktrek Images, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo

When researchers reported in 2006 that patients with null mutations in the voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.7 were impervious to pain, they kicked off an industry-wide hunt for novel analgesics. Genetic target validation was gaining traction as a means of improving drug development success rates, and Nav1.7 promised to be a poster child example of the drug development future. Instead, a slew of failures attest to how hard it can be to translate even the most compelling targets into therapeutics.

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Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 18, 321-323 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41573-019-00065-0

Updates & Corrections

  • Clarification 10 April 2019: Clarification has been made regarding the researchers responsible for using induced pluripotent stem cell technology to create Nav1.7-knockout nociceptors, and the researchers developing functional brain imaging markers of pain.

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