Drug makers looking to replace opioids try to keep some pain in the picture

Drug makers looking to replace opioids try to keep some pain in the picture

The thing about pain ...

… is that it’s not all bad. The chronic pain that keeps millions from a good night’s sleep is different from the sharp pangs that warn you not to keep your hand on a hot stove.

But for the drug industry, desperate to craft therapies that can relieve pain without the risk of addiction, how do you weave a treatment that blunts chronic agony without dampening the useful kind?

“This is a big question, and I’m not sure there’s an easy answer to it,” said Sulayman Dib-Hajj, a neuroscience researcher at Yale University. “If there were, we would have better drugs on the market right now.”

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