Major Pain Treatment Milestone Reached

A team of scientists from the University of Florida, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Southern California have found a new drug compound that selectively activates pain-altering receptors, thus providing surgeons with a potentially safer and effective alternative to conventional pain medications such as opioids. The work, “Structure-guided design of partial agonists at an opioid receptor,” appears in the March 13, 2025 edition of Nature Communications.