New Medication Formulations Could Quickly Make a Difference for Treating Opioid Addiction
As Francis Collins and I wrote in May, NIH and NIDA are committed to an “all scientific hands on deck” effort to end the opioid crisis in America by halving the time it takes to develop new medications to treat pain and addiction and reverse overdoses. This effort will involve partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions, leveraging the diverse benefits that federally funded science, private industry, and academia can bring to bear. Such partnerships have always been important in advancing treatment of addiction, as exemplified by NIDA’s partnership with Lightlake Therapeutics, Inc. (a partner of Adapt Pharma Limited) that led to the approval of nasal Narcan (an intranasal formulation of naloxone) in 2015.
The goals of the new initiative range from innovative and ambitious new treatment approaches that will take some time to develop, such as vaccines or transcranial magnetic stimulation for pain and addiction, to goals that are relatively achievable in the short term, such as improved formulations of existing medications. (NIDA, Nora’s Blog, 22.08.2017)