The DEA banned a drug some opioid users called a miracle
Researchers say the Schedule I ban could kill studies of a promising opioid treatment.
In 2012, as the driver of deaths in the opioid crisis began moving from prescription pills to heroin, Laura Bohn was tasked with finding safer drugs to manage pain.
Funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in 2017 she and other scientists revealed in the science journal Cell that several compounds—including a particularly promising one called SR-17018—could relieve pain in mice without causing respiratory depression. That’s a big deal, because respiratory depression is typically what causes people using opioids to stop breathing and die.
Bohn, senior associate vice president of research at University of South Florida Health, says her team filed a patent on SR-17018. They went on to discover that mice using the chemical did not develop a high tolerance for it and that mice already dependent on morphine—a powerful opioid—could consume SR-17018 to reset their tolerance without suffering from painful withdrawal symptoms.
This story was first published by Ars Technica. Read the original report