Drugmakers searching for opioid alternatives

Cannabis, chilies, snail toxin all being studied

In the wake of mounting overdoses and deaths from the opioid-addiction crisis sweeping across the U.S., drugmakers are racing to come up with safer painkillers.

Companies are highly motivated to create alternatives to the $4 billion opioid market. The federal government is cracking down on lax prescriptions that contribute to many thousands of deaths a year and has started to block the sale of medications it considers unsafe.

Drugs such as morphine, fentanyl and oxycodone are such powerful analgesics because they so effectively block pain signals by acting directly on the brain. Since they work at such a fundamental level, these medications would be perfect were it not for their tendency to cause addiction.

“In medical school, we used to play this game: If you could only take five drugs to a desert island, what would they be? Everyone would say morphine because it’s such a terrific drug for pain,” said Morgan Sheng, vice president of neuroscience and molecular biology at Roche Holding’s Genentech unit.

Drugmakers are tackling the challenge from all angles, working to create an arsenal of medications tailor-made for different forms of pain. These new drugs are drawing from the known pain-modifying attributes of chili peppers and cannabis; one of the more far-out medications in development is derived from a deadly toxin found in cone snails.

Many of these innovations are intended to treat osteoarthritis pain, a huge market as the baby-boomer generation ages. Centrexion Therapeutics Corp. is developing an injection using synthetic capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers. A midstage trial showed a single injection in patients’ knees brought significant relief for as long as six months.

Capsaicin reduces the hyper-sensitive nerve endings in the knee, “like a hair cut,” said Centrexion Chief Medical Officer Randall Stevens. The nerves will eventually grow back, requiring repeated treatment. The drug has the added benefit of not affecting nerves that sense touch and pressure, so the joint will retain some normal sensation, said Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler.

The Associated Press While prescription medications such as Oxycontin probably won’t ever be shelved for good — they’re just too potent — fears of addiction are leading drugmakers to experiment with alternatives using natural substances with...