More than 40,000 people each year die of opioid overdoses in the U.S. Overdoses can be reversed with the opioid antagonist naloxone, but the drug may be hard to access or may not be on-hand when a crisis strikes.
Now, researchers are trying a new approach: A naloxone-containing nanoparticle that can be injected under the skin and triggered to release the drug with a pulse of blue light. So far, the method has only been tested in mice, but it has the potential to meet an unmet need, says study leader Daniel Kohane, a drug-delivery scientist and critical care doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
“There are problems with access to [naloxone],” Kohane says, “and problems like, ‘Where did I put it? Did I take it with me to this party?’ Whereas here, it’s on you all the time.”
With scientist Wei Zhang, also of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Kohane and his team developed a nanoparticle based on the polymer poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA), which is already U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved for drug delivery. The polymer is both biocompatible and biodegradable. To each end of the polymer, the researchers attached a molecule of naloxone using a linker called coumarin. Coumarin is...
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