Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Opioid drugs are powerful pain-relieving drugs which present the risk of respiratory depression, which can be lethal with overdose. Naloxone, sold under the trade name Narcan, is a life-saving drug when administered during overdose but it is not a preventive treatment as it blocks the pain relief provided by opioids. To identify safe opioid pain therapies, we propose to screen and identify drug compounds that can block the respiratory side-effects of opioids, while preserving their pain-relieving properties. Drug screening using rodent models, the primary animal used in opioid research, is impractical as they have long reproductive and developmental rates. Zebrafish, however, develop quickly, have cost-effective maintenance and produce many offspring. This makes them ideal for drug screening of a safe opioid pain therapy. My research focuses on developing a zebrafish model for measuring opioid-induced respiratory depression to test drugs in combination with existing opioids, so to find a safe opioid pain therapy. These models will accelerate drug discovery, identify safe options for patients taking opioid drugs for pain management and greatly reduce the risk of lethal overdose.