Antiepileptic drugs in development pipeline: A recent update

• This review primarily focused on antiepileptic drugs under clinical development.
• The more realistic approach is needed to discover and develop the novel antiepileptic drugs.
• Modification of conventional drugs or search of newer targets can lead to development of promising antiepileptic drugs.
• To develop more efficacious and safe drugs for treatment of epilepsy and refractory seizures
• There are a number of novel antiepileptic compounds which are under various stages of drug development.

Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder which significantly affects the quality of life and poses a health as well as economic burden on society. Epilepsy affects approximately 70 million people in the world. The present article reviews the scientific rationale, brief pathophysiology of epilepsy and newer antiepileptic drugs which are presently under clinical development. We have searched the investigational drugs using the key words ‘antiepileptic drugs,’ ‘epilepsy,’ ‘Phase I,’ ‘Phase II’ and ‘Phase III’ in American clinical trial registers (clinicaltrials.gov), the relevant published articles using National Library of Medicine's PubMed database, company websites and supplemented results with a manual search of cross-references and conference abstracts. This review provides a brief description about the antiepileptic drugs which are targeting different mechanisms and the clinical development status of these drugs. Besides the presence of old as well as new AEDs, still there is a need of new drugs or the modified version of old drugs in order to make affected people free of seizures. An optimistic approach should be used to translate the success of preclinical testing to clinical practice. There is an urgent need to improve animal models and to explore new targets with better understanding in order to develop the novel drugs with more efficacy and safety.