Get the latest tech news
The first non-opoid painkiller
Journavx was approved this year. Why did it take so long to develop?
Stephen Waxman, a professor of neurology, neuroscience, and pharmacology at Yale’s medical school, discovered that a community in Alabama had numerous individuals suffering from erythromelalgia or ‘Man on Fire’ syndrome. This was essential because the human body contains nine known voltage-gated sodium channel types, each with a distinctive ‘ personality ’ – a unique pattern of rapid opening, closing, and voltage sensitivity – making high throughput key to pinpointing an appropriately selective drug. Vertex chose to keep funding and pushing forward through decades of work that industry professionals describe as ‘ tedious ’, ‘ mind-numbing ’, and ‘ painstaking ’, a slog driven by slow, incremental progress and frequent setbacks.
Or read this on Hacker News