Bypassing the opioid system

For years, a glance at any list of pain products in development has been disappointing, as most have been merely variations on the opioid theme. But a newly discovered subclass of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) may prove to be highly specific non-opioid targets to treat pain and other sensory neuron-related indications.

Scientists from AstraZeneca plc (LSE:AZN; AZN, London, U.K.) spotted the first evidence of the subclass when they found a 650 base pair cDNA fragment during a search for GPCRs in a primary culture of rat dorsal root ganglia, an area of the brain that it important for pain. They dubbed the subclass sensory neuron-specific G protein-coupled receptors (SNSRs)...