Scientists have designed a promising new painkiller that appears to separate the powerful pain dulling effects of synthetic opioids from side effects that include physical dependence, constipation, and potentially fatal respiratory depression.
To find the new drug–named PZM21 and detailed in a paper published today in Nature–a research team at UCSF’s School of Pharmacy simulated some four trillion different chemical interactions between the brain’s “morphine receptors,” and a virtual library of close to 4 million commercially available drug compounds. Choosing the best candidates, they then worked in collaboration with researchers from three other institutions to develop a compound that functioned in the way they hoped, after testing it in mice.
Source: MIT Tech Review