FDA OKs Drug for Severe Pain
WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration approved a drug Tuesday that offered a new way of fighting severe pain -- an option for patients who no longer benefited from morphine and other traditional pain medications.
The medicine is the first in a new class of drugs that selectively blocks the nerve channels responsible for transmitting pain signals. It will be marketed as Prialt and is expected to be available by the end of January.
The drug, manufactured by Elan Corp. of Ireland, is part of a new class known as N-type calcium channel blockers. It is known chemically as ziconotide.
The idea for the drug came from a type of snail in the South Pacific called the Conus magus, which paralyzes its victims with venom after capturing them, the company said. Researchers set out to learn how to develop a drug based on this venom and eventually copied the amino acid sequence.
The FDA approved Prialt for patients who already were using devices that pumped pain drugs under the skin into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord, but who were not getting effective relief or who could not tolerate the available treatments.
