Progress report on new antiepileptic drugs: A summary of the Tenth Eilat Conference (EILAT X)

The Tenth Eilat Conference on New Antiepileptic Drugs (AEDs)-EILAT X, took place in Eilat, Israel from the 25th to 29th of April 2010. About 200 basic scientists, clinical pharmacologists and neurologists from 25 countries attended the conference, whose main themes included learning from the past: Lessons learnt after 18 years of Eilat Conferences and Detecting assessing and preventing adverse effects of AEDs. Consistent with previous formats of this conference, a large part of the program was devoted to a review of AEDs in development, as well as updates on AEDs introduced since 1994. Like the previous EILAT (EILAT IX) manuscript, the current (EILAT X) manuscript focuses only on the preclinical and clinical pharmacology of AEDs that are currently in development. These include brivaracetam, carisbamate, 2-deoxy-glucose, ganaxolone, huperizine A, ICA-105665, NAX-5055, retigabine, perampanel, T-2007, valnoctamide and YK3089. Since the previous Eilat Conference (EILAT IX-2008) two new AEDs; eslicarbazepine acetate and lacosamide have been marketed and three new AEDs in development not included in the EILAT IX manuscript were added: ICA-105665, perampanel and valnoctamide. The CNS efficacy of these compounds in anticonvulsant animal models as well as other disease model systems are presented in Tables 1 and 2 and their proposed mechanism of action at summarized in Table 3.