A team of Japanese scientists has developed a new painkiller they say is as effective as fentanyl but without its addictive properties, a breakthrough that could reshape the fight against the global opioid crisis if clinical trials succeed.
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The team from Kyoto University has been working on the project for 13 years, with phase one clinical trials already proving successful and phase two trials due to start soon.
Masatoshi Hagiwara, a professor of pharmaceutical medicine at the university, hopes that larger-scale clinical trials will take place in the US next year and that the drug can be commercially available in around two years.
For Hagiwara, developing the painkiller is personal.
“My father, who was a doctor, died about 20 years ago of gall bladder cancer,” he told This Week in Asia. “The cancer was not the direct cause of his death; it was the morphine-based painkillers that he had to take to control the pain that eventually stopped his breathing. That is one of the typical adverse effects of morphine-based painkillers.”
The team’s new drug was able to eliminate pain without the side effects, even permitting the patient to remain fully conscious, he said, adding that one of the greatest benefits was that patients do not develop dependence.