A Kyoto University research team has developed a pain-reliever that is comparable to morphine but does not have serious side effects.

Morphine, often administered to cancer patients, can cause serious adverse effects such as breathing issues and addiction.

According to the team, the newly developed drug, Adriana, is a groundbreaking painkiller, which works on a completely different mechanism to morphine and other existing synthetic opioids. The drug has the potential to revolutionize pain control in the medical field, the team said.

The team also expects that the drug will help resolve the so-called opioid epidemic, in which a large number of deaths occur mainly due to overdoses of opioids.

Its findings were published in the online edition of the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When a person encounters a life-threatening situation, norepinephrine, an organic chemical secreted from the brain, suppresses pain.

For its study, the team focused on how the human body regulates oversecretion of norepinephrine. By introducing a new research technology, the team succeeded in developing a drug blocking such a control function for the first time in the world.

In a clinical trial conducted at the Kyoto University Hospital between January 2023 and December 2024, the team confirmed the new drug's efficiency to a certain extent for patients including 20 who underwent lung cancer surgery.

The team plans to conduct a clinical trial in the United States for 400 postsurgery patients in 2026, aiming to put Adriana into practical use in 2028.

"We hope that the new drug will help cancer patients who previously had no choice but to use opioids live their lives without pain as well as a need to worry about addiction or serious side effects," Masatoshi Hagiwara, a professor at the university, said.