An Opiate-Free, Durable, Non-Addictive Pain Killer For Inflammatory Pain ... in Rats

A Forbes article highlighted research conducted by Arindam Bhattacharjee, assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, about inflammatory pain in rats and a new non-addictive painkiller that was created from the research. While pain information gets electrically conveyed from pain neurons to the brain, the communication between an injury site and a pain neuron is molecular. The molecular communication depends upon a specific type of pain neuron and a specific type of protein, and it can be interrupted. “Within an hour or so of application, bodily enzymes destroy whatever peptides didn’t make it inside the cells,” said Bhattacharjee. “This means that the peptide is not in the bloodstream long and not entering the heart, the brain, the liver, or the kidney, and it’s not causing addiction or systemic side effects,” he said. The research was covered in a separate article by Drug Target Review.