Business Insider reports that James Zadina, a researcher at the Tulane School of Medicine and the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System, has been “attempting to engineer a new kind of painkiller” for the past 20 years, work that has “taken on new urgency” as “opioid-related deaths and addiction in the United States reach epidemic proportions.” His pursuit is challenging since the mechanisms of painkillers that dull pain are also “the ones that too often lead to crippling addiction and drug abuse.” Scientists have been attempting for decades to “separate the addictive properties of opiates from the pain-reducing properties,” said David Thomas, an administrator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a founding member of the NIH Pain Consortium. “They kind of go together.” According to the article, Zadina believes he may be “close to decoupling them,” his effort representing one of many to help reduce opioid abuse.
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