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| Vol. 22, No. 10 |
| June 1, 2000 |
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UH College of Pharmacy Researchers Study Reduction of Addictive Properties of Painkillers Creating a new formulation of morphine without its addictive properties is the impetus behind the research of two University of Houston College of Pharmacy faculty members. Dr. Kelly Standifer and Dr. Amruthesh Shivachar in the department of pharmacological and pharmaceutical sciences recently received an Advanced Research Program grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) in the amount of $111,056 to support this research. These grants are very competitive; less than 8 percent of biological sciences proposals to the THECB were funded. The funding will support research that may aid the country's war on drugs. "Morphine, hydrocodone and hydromorphone are the `gold standard' for treatment of moderate to severe pain. Though less than 0.5 percent of all pain patients ever become addicted to their therapeutic agent, illicit use of these drugs for recreational purposes constitutes a significant population of substance abuse cases," says Dr. Standifer. Confiscation of hydrocodone alone was responsible for 80 percent of the Drug Enforcement Agency's cases coming into Texas in 1997. It was recently reported that mice, genetically engineered so that they don' t express the protein (the cannabinoid receptor) responsible for the actions of marijuana, did not experience the rewarding effects of marijuana or morphine - even though morphine still produced pain relief in these animals. Drs. Standifer and Shivachar hypothesize that if the cannabinoid receptor is blocked, morphine and other morphine-like drugs won't be able to produce the euphoria or reinforcing "rush" that is responsible for their addictive potential, and the researchers hope to create a non-addictive pain reliever. "If our hypothesis is correct, then a morphine-like pain killer that contained a cannabinoid receptor antagonist would be worthless on the street because it would fail to produce a euphoric effect in an opioid addict," Dr. Shivachar says. - DARLA BROWN
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