Kyoto University team develops pain reliever comparable to morphine | Hacker News Reader

Kyoto University team develops pain reliever comparable to morphine

japantimes.co.jp

79 pointsnogajun26 comments

Marginally more info, along with the title of the paper, but the doi is broken: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-discovery-analgesic-p...

There's also the alternative Journavx: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzetrigine

I can't find the study about this compound, Discovery and development of an oral analgesic targeting the α2B adrenoceptor, anywhere. I'd like to read more about the clinical pharmacology in detail.

If you didn't already find it, this has now shown up: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2500006122

Thank you!

A new class of selective α2B-adrenoceptor antagonist.

Sounds like it comes with an increased risk of stroke and cardiological issues, psychomotor agitation, anxiety, aggression, possibly even psychosis. Humans have noradrenaline regulation for a reason.

We'll have to see. There are a lot of natural and experimental painkillers that aren't used either because of side effects or more often because they just don't work consistently. It just so happens that so far the opioids are the only ones that can handle extreme pain. It's a hard problem to solve

Does the article not consider those to be serious side effects then? What is considered serious?

In this case, I believe ”serious side effects” is referring to opioid addiction and physical dependency.

It works by causing a release of noadrenalin.

Prediction: It will end up being used by the military and/or fighters to provide instantaneous muscle strength coupled with pain relief from overexertion.

Isn't that just gonna keep the patients in constant fight-or-flight mode? Perhaps developing PTSD or something over time...

With soldiers it makes sense to use it explicitly to enforce the "fight" mode as needed. This can range from "occasionally in emergencies" to "all the time".

But militaries have famously not cared about the long term health and well being of their forces past their active use. So any consequence of "long term fight mode" past victory day are just the cost of doing business.

"Your injuries were not service related."

“Victory day” lol, I think the only one I’ve been alive for so far was “Mission Accomplished”

It's only constant if you constantly administer it

Sounds like a secondary concern to me /s

Star Craft marine stim packs let's gooooo

My exact first thought

It is hard to beat morphine and its derivatives (eg fentanyl). In strict medical settings they are excellent analgetics and anxiolytics, safe with minor side effects. The only problem is when things go wary after the initial use (dependence etc).

What about tolerance? Will it need increasing doses to be effective?

Why is this written in such a way to only target cancer patients?

The class of patients most likely to require opioids over long periods of time?

And a class disproportionately insensitive to long term negative side effects.

I have GOT to find a way to describe more things like this.

Probably that's where the funding is available.

How is it different from Imiloxan?

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