Enlarge / Medical Research: albino rat for animal experiments (credit: Getty | fotografixx)
With a straightforward chemical tweak, the addictive—and often deadly—opioid painkiller, fentanyl, may transform into a safe, non-addictive, targeted therapy. Researchers reported this on Thursday in Science.
In rats, a chemically modified form of the opioid could only work on inflamed, hurting tissue—not the rest of the body. Plus, it wasn’t deadly at high doses, like the original, and it didn’t spur addiction-forming behavior in the rodents, researchers at Freie Universität Berlin reported.
“This yielded a novel opioid analgesic [pain reliever] of similar efficacy to conventional fentanyl, however, devoid of detrimental side effects,” the authors concluded.
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