Their method successfully counteracted two highly addictive drugs—fentanyl and methamphetamine—in lab experiments. Drug overdoses in the United States have risen sharply in the last two decades. Nearly 92,000 people died from overdoses of illegal drugs and prescription opioids in 2020—more than f
Naloxone has saved countless lives, but it only works for opioid overdoses and has other limitations. Now, in an effort to identify a more universal treatment for drug overdose, a team of University of Maryland scientists tested a chemical compound—Pillar[6]MaxQ —as an antidote for methamphetamine and fentanyl.
The study was conducted by Isaacs’ lab in collaboration with researchers in UMD’s Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics and Department of Psychology. Although the synthesis and chemical properties of P6AS were first documented in 2020 by Isaacs and Weijian Xue, a former post-doctoral associate in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, this study reports its firstP6AS works as a molecular container, which means that it binds and sequesters other compounds in its central cavity.
Unlike naloxone, which stops a drug of abuse from binding to receptors in the brain, the UMD team’s molecular container targets drugs directly in the bloodstream. Whether this compound helps promote a drug’s excretion from the body must be tested experimentally. If it performs in the way that researchers think it will, it could be particularly useful for overdoses of fentanyl, which isthan heroin and up to 100 times stronger than morphine. Its potency and lingering effects in the body explain why some patients continue to overdose even after receiving naloxone.
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