Empowered Patient Podcast Opioid Modifications and Innovations to Guard Against Abuse and Overdoses with Greg Sturmer Elysium Therapeutics
Greg Sturmer is the Co-Founder and CEO of Elysium Therapeutics and rethinking how to overcome the challenges of opioid abuse and addiction by reformulating the drug itself. Blending an understanding of chemistry and human behavior, Elysium questions why it takes 70 years for an opioid to lose half its potency and what would discourage patients from taking more opioids than their prescribed treatment plan.
Greg explains, "When you look at Elysium's mission, just to step back briefly, it's all about relieving suffering from acute pain, from opioid use disorder, and from an opioid overdose. And our objective is to save thousands of lives each year and reduce the next generation of opioid use disorder sufferers while still providing patients with highly effective, proven pain relief."
"O2P, again, which stands for Oral Overdose Protection, is expected to be the first-in-class immediate-release opioid that eliminates that incentive to take more. And it protects against fatal overdose, not only orally but also via injection and inhalation. So, it's a way that Tom has done using chemistry, has created a way to limit, self-limit, the amount of opioid that actually becomes activated. So regardless of how many you swallow, we're limiting the amount of opioid that will actually be active. And that'll protect, one, from incentivizing an individual to take more and, two, preventing an overdose."
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