“As Francis Collins and I wrote in May, NIH and NIDA are committed to an “all scientific hands on deck” effort to end the opioid crisis in America by halving the time it takes to develop new medications to treat pain and addiction and reverse overdoses.
The goals of the new initiative range from innovative and ambitious new treatment approaches that will take some time to develop, such as vaccines or transcranial magnetic stimulation for pain and addiction, to goals that are relatively achievable in the short term, such as improved formulations of existing medications.
Effective medications are already available to treat opioid addiction—buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone—but only a fraction of people with opioid use disorders are being treated with them, due to limited access and treatment capacity, stigma around their use, lack of provider training, and cost. Also, for those treated, compliance tends to be low and few are retained in treatment for sufficient periods of time. New formulations of these medications that can facilitate access to treatment and improve compliance could be a real game-changer that could quickly make a dent in this crisis.”
Source: HuffingtonPost.com – August 22, 2017