Novel Strategies for Accelerating Non-Opioid Drug Discovery
Abstract
Our societal dependence on opioid drugs as the primary therapy for severe acute and chronic pain has resulted in a broad range of problems (e.g., drug abuse, addiction), creating an urgent need to phase out the pervasive use of opioids for pain. The formidable challenge that our program will address is to establish a dynamic pipeline of diverse natural products that should provide a continuous stream of non-opioid drug leads for pain. One of the few successful non-opioid pain drugs to be launched and FDA-approved in the past decades was isolated in our labs from natural sources. Two other compounds from the same source have reached human clinical trials. Despite this record of success, what has slowed down our efforts is the complexity of the biology underlying pain. Recently, we developed a new biological platform that has accelerated the development of new ligands for new targets and pain therapy. An even greater acceleration was recently achieved in which we have married our new developments in constellation pharmacology with well-validated pain models, enabling us to compare sensory pathways in neurons that have experienced chronic pain with those in normal neurons. Together, these methods are transforming our ability to rapidly discover new targets and ligands to treat pain.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1124975
Entities
People
- Baldomero Olivera
Organizations
- University of Utah