UCSD Doctor Gets Painkiller Research Grant

A UC San Diego professor has received a five-year, $250,000 grant to study substances that show promise of replacing or augmenting morphine for relief of intense pain.

Dr. Tony L. Yaksh, professor of anesthesiology, received the unrestricted grant from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. as part of a program that has given $24 million in grants for medical research since 1977.

Yaksh is studying ways to stop pain by injecting drugs around the spinal cord or around the site of the injury itself.

“Administering morphine and other opiates through the central nervous system can be like using a bomb to hit a single target in a shooting gallery,” Yaksh said. “Yes, you get very good pain relief, but you also have the potential for side effects like respiratory depression, sedation, constipation and itching.”

In 1977, Yaksh demonstrated that injecting morphine into the space around the spinal cord blocks pain signals to the brain. He since has concluded that a key part of the transmission is a chemical called Substance P. He also been able to block pain at the sites of specific injuries by blocking production of Substance P.

Better understanding of the ways that Substance P and other chemical mechanisms promote pain could lead to drugs specifically designed to block those actions, Yaksh says.