Intranasal Morphine for Rapid Breakthrough Pain Relief

Morphine gluconate with intranasal delivery couples a sufficient dose with the rapid onset of action necessary to treat opioid-tolerant cancer patients with breakthrough pain.

With intranasal delivery, a drug is absorbed directly into the systemic circulation, bypassing problems that occur with oral administration, including the inactivation of a portion of the administered dose by gastrointestinal and hepatic metabolism. As a result, plasma concentrations of a nasally administered drug often resemble those seen with injectable dosage forms, prompting fast onset of therapeutic effect without the discomfort and inconvenience of an injection. A phase II clinical trial is under way.

The drug was developed by Nastech Pharmaceutical Company, Inc. (Bothell, WA, USA), which has been issued a US patent on a method of making morphine gluconate and a method for eliciting an analgesic or anesthetic response. The company says morphine is the most commonly used opioid to control severe pain because of its wide availability, varied formulations, well-characterized pharmacologic properties, safety, efficacy, and relative ease of titration. However, it is currently not available in a nasal form. Nastech uses a systemic approach to drug development using biophysics, physical chemistry, and pharmacology.

"Over the past 18 months, we have filed dozens of patents to protect our proprietary position in the nasal delivery of both small and large molecule drugs,” noted Steven C. Quay, M.D., Ph.D., chairman, president, and CEO of Nastech.




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