Novel Pain Management Compound
Strong painkillers like morphine are effective, but they come with serious risks, including addiction, overdose, and other health problems. Tulane researchers are creating a new approach that aims to solve a significant challenge by a new class of drugs for the treatment of pain, targeting the mu-opioid receptor (mor) with reduced side-effects.
The following technologies are offered as a “bundle” or can be pursued individually.
- Novel Pain Management Compound
- Enhanced Pain Management Compound
The Problem
Strong painkillers like morphine are effective, but they come with serious risks, including addiction, overdose, and other health problems. Many people avoid using them, even when they are in severe pain. There is an urgent need for safer pain relief options that work just as well but do not carry the same risks, especially for people with chronic conditions.
The Solution
Tulane researchers are creating a new approach that aims to solve a significant challenge by a new class of drugs for the treatment of pain, targeting the mu-opioid receptor (MOR) with reduced side-effects. Activators of MOR are the most effective treatments for moderate to severe acute and chronic pain; however, their use is limited by potentially severe side effects. Tulane’s drugs are peptide analogs of endomorphin that bind to MOR to produce analgesia at least as effectively as morphine but show reduction or absence of several significant side effects. These include abuse liability, tolerance, respiratory depression, and neuroinflammation, where mechanistic differences from morphine have been observed. They also show potential for treating opioid use disorder (OUD). Studies on second generation analogs show effectiveness in multiple pain models with significant reduction of side effects. A third generation shows significantly greater analgesic effects relative to morphine.
The Opportunity
This technology could be used in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, specifically in the development of next-generation pain therapeutics. It addresses major unmet needs in pain management, providing an alternative to traditional opioids with a reduced risk of addiction and other severe side effects. Potential applications include treatment of acute and chronic pain in clinical settings such as post-surgical care, cancer pain, and neuropathic pain. Additionally, the compounds may have value in the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD), offering a novel therapeutic pathway for addressing the ongoing opioid crisis. Pharmaceutical companies developing non-addictive pain medications or seeking safer opioid alternatives would be prime adopters of this technology.
