Cassowary, a University of Queensland spin-off, will target a molecule that is important in how the body senses pain.

Cassowary co-founder Professor Trent Munro from the Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, said the company had recently received funding from the Medical Research Future Fund and would be recruiting candidates for clinical trials over the next 18 months.

“This funding has let us put together a consortium that spans a number of groups across the university to look at developing novel pain treatments where there really aren’t good solutions for people at the moment,” Munro said.

“People are put onto products that really have a lot of side effects and impact their daily life and we hope that through Cassowary Pharma we will be able to deliver new types of pain medications that avoid those side effects and provide relief for those people with long term pain.

“This research really builds on some key long term fundamental research that was done by (UQ’s) Professor Maree Smith where she discovered a new molecule that is really important in how your body senses pain and the drug we are developing is targeting that particular molecule.

“Professor Smith had success previously in developing that molecule and it had even been taken up by global biopharma Navartis and taken into phase two trials. Those programs are no longer going but Cassowary Pharma gives us the opportunity to look at that target again and develop a new type of drug that we hope will be a novel solution for treatment of neuropathic pain.

“We are really keen now to meet our first milestones in looking at can we get the initial proof of concept data to prove that our thoughts of what is going to be a drug tomorrow actually delivers in the lab.”

Munro said the drug could potentially change the lives of millions of people. About 10 per cent of the adult population were affected by neuropathic pain and many of the current treatments were ineffective or have significant side effects.