The team from Kyoto University has been working on the project for 13 years, with phase one clinical trials already proving successful and phase two trials due to start soon.
For Hagiwara, developing the painkiller is personal.
“My father, who was a doctor, died about 20 years ago of gall bladder cancer,” he told This Week in Asia. “The cancer was not the direct cause of his death; it was the morphine-based painkillers that he had to take to control the pain that eventually stopped his breathing. That is one of the typical adverse effects of morphine-based painkillers.”
The team’s new drug was able to eliminate pain without the side effects, even permitting the patient to remain fully conscious, he said, adding that one of the greatest benefits was that patients do not develop dependence.
