ACTiON Study : Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy (CIPN)
ACTiON is a Phase 2, double blind placebo-controlled crossover randomised clinical trial (‘RCT’) to assess Ananda’s patent-pending MRX1 drug candidate versus placebo in the treatment of CIPN.
About CIPN and its treatment
- CIPN is one of the most frequent side effects of treatment of cancers with chemotherapy, affecting up to 50% of patients.
- There are 160,000 new patients every year in the UK alone.
- CIPN has a ‘glove and stocking’ distribution and symptoms include pins and needles, tingling, pain, burning, hyperalgesia (increased response to normally painful stimulus), allodynia (pain in response to innocuous stimulus), proprioception difficulties, functional impairment, fine motor task difficulties, Quality of Life impairment.
- Currently there are no effective treatments for the prevention of CIPN and symptomatic treatment is frequently ineffective. It is a condition with a high unmet clinical need.
Trial Team:
Marie Fallon (MD FRCP(Glas) FRCP(E) MRCGP DCH DRCOG). Marie is a Professor of Palliative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and she is an Honorary Consultant in Palliative Medicine based at the Edinburgh Cancer Centre. She has played a significant role in research both nationally and internationally and has led international palliative care guidelines such as ESMO for cancer pain and ASCO for cachexia. She has been Joint Editor of four editions of the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine which is the reference textbook in the specialty. Prof. Fallon has edited several other books and sits on numerous grant committees, as well as being an editorial board member of the BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care journal. Finally, of note, much of her research in recent years and currently relates to Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). She strives to help with the thorny issue of opioid availability in LMICs.
Heather Whalley, PhD. Professor of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences. Her work focuses on the major global health challenge of mental health and her research involves linking neuroimaging, genomic, molecular and electronic/computational phenotyping to improve our understanding and treatment of mental ill health.