K K DurgaRao Viswanadham, Roland Böttger, Lukas Hohenwarter, Anne Nguyen, Elham Rouhollahi, Alexander Smith, Yi-Hsuan Tsai, Yuan-Yu Chang, Christopher Llynard Ortiz, Lee-Wei Yang, Liliana Jimenez, Siyuan Li, Chan Hur, Shyh-Dar Li
Opioids account for 69,000 overdose deaths per annum worldwide and cause serious side effects. Safer analgesics are urgently needed. The endogenous opioid peptide Leu-Enkephalin (Leu-ENK) is ineffective when introduced peripherally due to poor stability and limited membrane permeability. We developed a focused library of Leu-ENK analogs containing small hydrophobic modifications. N-pivaloyl analog KK-103 showed the highest binding affinity to the delta opioid receptor (68% relative to Leu-ENK) and an extended plasma half-life of 37 h...
June 22, 2021: Pharmaceutics