Could Chili Peppers Be The Answer To Opioid-Reliance For Chronic Pain?

Centrexion Therapeutics, led by former Pfizer Inc. PFE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler, is developing non-addictive painkillers with the help of chili peppers, according to a report on Bloomberg.

One of the most common pain-management regimes in the United States is opiod-based drug management. Unfortunately, opioids, such as OxyContin, are also the leading cause of overdoses, drug additions and overdose-related deaths in the United States.

"When we talk about chronic pain, like chronic low-back pain, physicians feel like they only have one bullet in their toolbox that works for many, many patients," Michael Oshinsky, program director for pain and migraine at the National Institutes of Health, said regarding opioids.

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Bloomberg said, "The problem with narcotics is that in treating pain they affect an area of the brain that registers intense pleasure." On the other hand, "Centrexion's drugs are designed to target pain directly, without triggering the brain's reward system."

"The company is developing an injectable drug to treat arthritis and foot pain that contains a synthetic version of capsaicin, a substance in chili plants." The report noted that it is the furthest along of five drugs Centrexion has in development; it could be available in the market by 2020.

"Truthfully, there aren't many, if any, really safe, effective chronic-pain treatments that have good duration, good safety, and nonaddictive properties," Kindler told Bloomberg.

"Some 33 experimental therapies for pain failed in trials from 2009 to 2015. Centrexion thinks it can beat the odds," according to Bloomberg.

"There hasn't been a lot going on in the pain space," Kerrie Brady, the company's chief business officer told Bloomberg. "There really hasn't been a lot of innovation out there."