BULLSHIT OR REAL? –
April 6, 2026 – “Opioid pain medications are essential for medical purposes, but can lead to addiction and overdose,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “Developing a highly effective pain medication without these drawbacks would have enormous public health benefits.” The researchers turned their attention to nitazenes, a little-studied group of synthetic opioids. These compounds target mu opioid receptors, which play a central role in how opioids affect the brain and nervous system. Nitazenes were largely abandoned in the 1950s because of their extreme potency.
In this study, scientists revisited these compounds with a new goal: retain their receptor selectivity while redesigning them to improve safety.
“Our goal was to study the profile, or pharmacology, of these drugs,” said Michael Michaelides, Ph.D., senior author and NIDA investigator. “We wanted to decrease the potency and create a potential therapeutic. What we discovered exceeded our expectations.”
The team began by studying a compound called FNZ, which can be labeled with a radioactive tracer for positron emission tomography (PET). This imaging method allowed researchers to follow the drug’s movement through the brain in real time.
