Roseman researchers tackle pain management and cancer treatment.

• Author: Page, Stephanie
• Position: INNOVATIONS

Two patents have been filed by Roseman that could result in changes to the way care providers manage pain, and offer better diagnosis and treatment for cancer patients.

(Not) Feeling the Pain

More than 200 million prescriptions for opioid painkillers are dispensed each year in the United States and it has been estimated that up to five percent of people who receive a prescription for these medications will become addicted--a significant risk for anyone who takes opioids. Users of these medicines were 20 times more likely than non-users to report that they had taken the highly addictive and even potentially deadly illegal drug heroin in the past year, indicating that these medications might be gateway drugs for a portion of people who first begin taking them as legal prescriptions.

Non-addictive, non-opioid painkillers are available, including NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like ibuprofen, but there is generally a limit to how much pain relief these drugs offer, and many people only experience relief with the more powerful prescription analgesics. Dr. Tyler Rose, an Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy at Roseman University's South Jordan, Utah campus, saw an opportunity to develop new painkillers that can provide greater relief than NSAIDs without the risk of addiction that accompanies opioids.

Dr. Rose's work involves making new molecules that could become strong, but non-addictive, painkillers. The molecules inhibit the same protein target as NSAIDs, but go further by simultaneously inhibiting two additional pain targets found in the human body (making them triple-action molecules), neither of which has been associated with addiction. These findings were reported in an article entitled "Inhibition of FAAH, TRPV1, and COX2 by NSAID-serotonin conjugates" in a December 2014 issue of Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters.

"People don't commonly associate NSAIDs with fats, but the enzyme that the NSAIDs inhibit is one that catalyzes a reaction involving a fatty acid," said Dr. Rose. When he recognized that fats were also involved in some other pain-related processes, he hypothesized that a single, NSAID-like molecule could be used to target three of these processes at once.

Besides pain, inhibition of the three proteins targeted by these molecules also shows promise in treating anxiety. It makes sense, because both pain and fear tend to have overlapping signaling pathways. Both promote...