Breadcrumb
Pharmacy research could revolutionize treatment for opioid overdoses
(L-R) Md Tariqul Haque Tuhin 22, Hala Aldawod 23 and Dengpan Liang 22
A 勛圖tv pharmacy professor is receiving a prestigious $1.7 million federal grant to discover a better antidote for opioid overdoses.
Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy Professor Mamoun M. Alhamadsheh is only the third Pacific professor in more than 20 years to receive an R01the highest level of competitive research grants from the National Institutes of Health.
This is the highest achievement in biomedical research at Pacific that all scientists dream about, said Professor William K. Chan, chair of the Department of Pharmaceutics and Medicinal Chemistry.
With a team of graduate students, Alhamadsheh is working to discover a more potent and longer lasting antidote for opioid overdoses. The research is urgently needed. Illicit synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, account for about two thirds of drug overdose deaths in the United States.
Current antidotes are not very effective with synthetic opioids because the opioids stay in the body much longer than the antidotes, which causes people to relapse and stop breathing again, Alhamadsheh said. Thats why many patients may require multiple doses of the antidote after the initial rescue.
(L-R) Md Tariqul Haque Tuhin 22, Rasha Emara 24, Dengpan Liang 22, Mamoun Alhamadsheh, Arjun Patel 24, Avishan Kiani 25 and Hala Aldawod 23
The team, including graduate students Hala Aldawod 23, Joshua Ho 24, Arjun Patel 24 and Rasha Emara 24 and recent graduates Dengpan Liang 22 and Md Tariqul Haque Tuhin 22, is working to extend the duration of antidotes in the body for 24 hours or more using antidotes already approved by the Food and Drug Administrationnaloxone, known as Narcan, and nalmefene.
Aldawod provided the majority of the preliminary data using a novel drug delivery approach previously discovered by Alhamadsheh. Aldawod optimized the technology for countering overdoses by designing a new molecule that stays in the body and releases the antidote slowly rather than all at once.
The significance of this finding is tremendous. This is the first time someone has increased the half-life of naloxone, while maintaining its full efficacy. The beauty of our approach is that we are empowering drugs that are already approved by the FDA, Alhamadsheh said.
Aldawod was drawn to the research after learning of the dramatic increase in overdose deaths among high school students in the United States, which has more than doubled since 2019.
Many of these kids were taking pills that they thought were Xanax, not knowing it was laced with fentanyl. I want to do something to protect these kids from overdoses, Aldawod said.
The team is currently optimizing the technology to eventually allow for moving the lead antidotes to clinical trials.
Our findings have the potential to lead to an opioid antidote that goes to the market and helps people, so thats the dream, Aldawod said.
The teams findings are expected to be published later this year.
