Scientists Discover What Could Be a ‘Perfect’ Painkiller Without Side Effects
17th August 2016
A team that included Nobel Prize-winning chemist Professor Brian Kobilka, of Stanford University in the US discovered the drug called PZM21 after evaluating some three million different compounds.
Morphine, derived from the opium poppy, works by acting on a receptor in the brain that reduces pains, but it also affects a different receptor that can lead to fatal breathing problems in the event of an overdose.
But PZM21, which so far has only been tested on mice, appears to act on the first receptor to about the same level as morphine without significantly changing the second one.