ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2011) — A powerful new painkiller, which was developed on the basis of the research conducted at Stony Brook University and with no apparent side effects or addictive qualities, may now be only a year or two from the consumer market.

"This offers a major paradigm shift in the control of pain," declares Dr. Simon Halegoua, Professor of Neurobiology & Behavior at Stony Brook who in the 1990s, teamed up with fellow Stony Brook professors Dr. Gail Mandel and Dr. Paul Brehm to identify a novel sodium ion channel involved in the transmission of pain. They predicted that a drug aimed at blocking this channel, PN1/Nav 1.7, would control pain. PN1 (Peripheral Neuron 1), is uniquely expressed in peripheral nerves such as those involved in pain transduction.

"When a patient is given an opiate like morphine, pain signals are still transmitted from sensory nerves to the central nervous system. Morphine action throughout the brain reduces and alters pain perception, but it also impairs judgement and results in drug dependence," explains Halegoua, also director of the Center for Nervous System Disorders at Stony Brook University. "With drugs targeting the PN1/Nav1.7 sodium ion channel, the pain signals would not be transmitted, even by the sensory nerves. And since the central nervous system is taken out of the equation, there would be no side effects and no addictive qualities."

The potential for such drugs is enormous -- the reduction or elimination of pain for patients with cancer, arthritis, migraine headaches, muscle pain, pain from burns, and pain from other debilitating diseases.

He notes that drugs in both oral and topical ointment forms, based on the research he conducted in a basement laboratory at Stony Brook with Mandel, a molecular biologist, and Brehm, an electrophysiologist, are currently in Phase II clinical trials in England and Canada.

The Research Foundation of the State University of New York is the holder of the various patents originating from the work of the Stony Brook researchers. Icagen Inc., now in partnership with Pfizer, holds the exclusive license to these patents and has announced their own drug has now entered Phase I clinical trials in the U.S.

http://www.sciencedaily....2011/01/110128145937.htm

Wow in a year when this starts replacing all the conventional pain killers it is going to suck ass to be an opiate junkie! Great news for the rest of the world though.

Problem is I can't find any info on what the substance is except some long code name with lots of numbers. Oh well.

non-addictive, ok
but no side-effects?

a professor once said, "show me a drug with no side-effects, and i'll show you a drug that doesn't work."

It is a shame the article didn't mention the drug.. if nothing else it piqued my curiosity.



Indeed.

We'll probably never hear of this again. It would cost the pharmaceutical companies too much money, not to mention the rehabs and the police and the prison industry. If there are no side effects and no addictive properties, there wouldn't be a real reason to schedule it. Right? So we'd be able to go into any store and buy it off of the shelf?

This seems like a lot of b.s.

Would it block all pain? If so it would be WAAY more dangerous than opiates. People would probably become addicted to feeling no pain, go around on this stuff and die of a multitude of small injuries they aren't aware of.

This reminds me of something I saw on cnn a few years ago about a new advance in dentistry. Someone had discovered a bacteria replacement method, that would kill all of the deleterious oral dwelling bacteria and replace them with beneficial bacteria, thus wiping out tooth decay, gum disease etc. I never heard anything about it again. My dentist said he'd never heard of it either. It's either too good to be true, or too good to be profitable.

I have a professor who has neuropathy in 60% of his body (Vietnam vet). He would much rather go back to being able to feel, and I'm betting "pain receptors" play a role in the greater texture of our pleasant sensations. He has had to have his wife tell him to go to the hospital a few times regarding an injury that he hadn't felt, but at no point was in a life-threatening situation.

Just for context, morphine and heroin were both marketed as such; powerful painkillers without the addictive qualities of the previous iteration.

Most prescription drugs are not scheduled. Just because a drug isn’t scheduled doesn’t mean it can/must be made available as an over-the-counter remedy.

I read about this several years ago. There are people who are born with a genetic disorder that causes them to be insensitive to pain. This disorder is not something you’d want to have – people who have it frequently die at an early age due to physical trauma of one sort or another, such as severe burns, severe broken bones, lacerations, and every other imaginable damage often followed by infections that lead to amputations or death. Not good.

Anyhow, it was discovered that these people have some defect in the sodium ion channels of their peripheral nerves. It’s interesting, because they can still feel pressure, hot and cold, and all other tactile sensations in a normal way, but they just don’t feel pain.

The discovery that sodium ion channels are specifically responsible for conduction of pain signals is what has lead to this new drug/treatment. I suppose that if the drug could be applied only to select areas, then it could control pain without leading to injury. I think it’s a great development, and if it is further developed and approved, it will be immensely useful for people in pain, and tremendously profitable for the drug companies.

It allways sucks ass to be an opiate junkie. Or a junky of anything at all really. period.
It may just be a good way of forcing opiate junkies to go cold turkey and reclaim their lives.

But let's not cheer too soon. We can only say if this new painkiller is really all that better and without side-effects that are worse than the initial problem they're taken to cure. I guess time and experience will tell.

probably not. They'll just switch to something else...and I doubt this will replace opiates.

Plus 3 years after becoming available you'll see Lawyers on TV asking if you've taken this, cause you can sue for the cancer, rectal bleeding, runny nose, and permenant nerve damage it gave you..call now!

No such thing a "no side effects".