Bio-Activated Opioid Drugs with Unprecedented Oral and Non-Oral Abuse-Resistance

DESCRIPTION: The abuse of prescription drugs is the fastest-growing drug problem in the United States, and reducing such abuse is a national priority. While one of the most prevalent routes of abuse for opioid medicines is the oral route, current formulation- and molecular-based technologies are primarily designed to resist abuse via non-oral routes (e.g., inhalation and injection). Consequently, these approaches fail to adequately address oral abuse and overdose (i.e., co-ingestion of multiple pills), andcan be easily thwarted by straightforward extraction techniques. To address the nation's prescription drug misuse, abuse, and overdose epidemics, comprehensive, robust abuse-resistance technologies need to be developed and, ideally, applied to all prescription opioid drugs. To that end, we propose to qualify at least one product candidate for IND-enabling studies from a unique class of proprietary molecules designed to provide effective opioid-based pain relief, with unprecedented protection from all routes