Susruta Majumdar, Ph.D., associate professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacology at University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis, has been awarded $2 million in grants to further his work to target opioid and non-opioid receptors with the goal of creating safer analgesics for pain relief.
The funding includes a two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) initiative, which was created to bolster research across NIH to improve treatments for opioid misuse and addiction, and enhance pain management. Majumdar will use the NIH HEAL funding to examine the effectiveness of repurposing cannabinoids to provide neuropathic pain relief without the side effects associated with classical cannabinoid and opioid receptor modulators.