A Montana-based company that produces treatments for neurological disorders has scored a $408,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a method of imaging and measuring pain.
Privately held Expesicor said it will use the one-year funding award to further refine its novel imaging agent, called EXP-801. If successful, it would allow radiologists to visualize and measure pain using positron emission tomography (PET). This could help to advance both the treatment of personalized pain and the development of new, non-opioid medications.
"Safe and effective therapies for pain management are lacking and misuse is far too common,” Braxton Norwood, principal investigator and CEO of Expesicor, said in a statement. “We're confident that EXP-1801 will help improve pain treatment and contribute to the development of novel therapies with lower abuse potential."
Funding comes by way of the NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) initiative, aimed at preventing misuse and addiction while also enhancing pain management. Expesicor believes this would be the first tool enabling clinicians to objectively measure pain.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.