U.S. - Allergan's failed depression drug shows promise in opioid withdrawal

S.J.B.

S.J.B.

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Allergan's failed depression drug shows promise in opioid withdrawal
Angus Liu
FierceBiotech
April 7th, 2019

Last month, Allergan said that rapastinel—the centerpiece of its $560 million acquisition of Naurex—had failed in three pivotal trials in major depressive disorder. But not all is lost. Scientists at Duke University and Villanova University may have found a use for the drug in treating opioid withdrawal.

People who become dependent on opioids can experience excruciating withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, vomiting, diarrhea and insomnia. These symptoms often prevent them from seeking help, or they cause relapse in patients who do seek out treatment for addiction.

Rapastinel might help manage those symptoms, according to a new study by Julia Ferrante at Villanova University and Cynthia Kuhn at Duke University. The experimental drug substantially reversed acute withdraw signs in rats in three days, the researchers said in a release. The study was presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting in Orlando.

There are FDA-approved drugs to treat opioid use disorder. Buprenorphine and methadone are commonly used to help eliminate the opioid cravings. But they are also opioids that can be abused, they can cause side effects and patients sometimes need to use them over the long term to avoid relapse.

Two other drugs, naloxone and naltrexone, are not opioids. But patients need to detox before they can use naltrexone, and naloxone is more appropriate for use in emergency settings to reverse opioid overdoses.
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^till they see that K basically feels like pschedelic heroin and get addicted to that after getting off opioids

interesting drug, from wiki:

weak partial agonist (mixed antagonist/agonist) of an allosteric site of the glycine site of the NMDA receptor complex (Emax ≈ 25%).[1][2] The drug is a rapid-acting and long-lasting antidepressant as well as robust cognitive enhancer by virtue of its ability to both inhibit and enhance NMDA receptor-mediated signal transduction.[1][2]

i actually want to try it just for kicks
 
^ Interesting drug indeed... you might be able to try it at some point, I wouldn't rule out it becoming available via grey market nootropic vendors eventually.

I think even if drugs eventually fail to meet their target endpoints in trials, it doesn't mean they might not be useful for some other condition in this case, or even for the originally intended purpose for some segment of the population, just not a significant enough percentage to make it commercially. For example NSI-189 was another potential treatment for MDD that failed in Phase 3 trials, but has since built up a fairly significant library of anecdotal reports about it's effectiveness... obviously anecdotes are no substitute for clinical trials but... always interesting to see new chemicals.
 
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