Medications Development for Opioid Use Disorders and for Overdose Prevention and Reversal

June 05, 2017

Location:

8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Wilson Hall, Building 1 National Institutes of Health Campus



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Discussion: Stimulate innovative directions in preventing and treating opioid use disorders and overdoses.

Public-Private Initiative to Address the Opioid Crisis

Opioid misuse and addiction is an ongoing and rapidly evolving public health crisis. Millions of Americans suffer from opioid use disorder, and millions more suffer from chronic pain. The urgency and scale of this crisis calls for innovative scientific solutions. As part of a government-wide effort to address this crisis, NIH is supplementing existing research efforts with a public-private collaborative research initiative on pain and opioid abuse.  In April 2017, NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., met with research and development leaders from the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies to discuss new ways for government and industry to work together to address the opioid crisis. The initial plan for this initiative was recently laid out by Dr. Collins and National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Nora D. Volkow, M.D., in the New England Journal of Medicine (link is external).

NIH is moving forward with establishing a public-private partnership to address three major areas for advancement: (1) new and innovative medications and biologics to treat opioid addiction and for overdose prevention and reversal; (2) safe, effective, and non-addictive strategies to manage chronic pain; and (3) neurobiology of chronic pain.

To identify the scientific strategies with the greatest potential for solutions to the opioid problem, NIH is bringing together innovative experts from government, industry, and academia for a series of three cutting-edge science meetings in the coming weeks.

Through these meetings, NIH will identify new approaches and recruit additional expertise with the aim of developing new safe and effective therapeutics for opioid abuse and chronic pain in half the time it currently takes.

These meetings will be closed to the public to allow for active building of the partnership; however, NIH will share outcomes and provide updates as this initiative moves forward.  

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