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A billion-dollar pharmaceutical executive who has been accused of triggering the US opioid crisis is expected to take advantage of the epidemic after patenting a new treatment for drug addicts.
Richard Sackler, whose family owns Purdue Pharma, the company behind the famous painkiller OxyContin, was granted a patent earlier this year for a reformulation of a drug used to wean opioid addicts.
The invention is a new form of buprenorphine, a mild opiate that controls drug cravings, often used as a substitute for people hooked on heroin or opioid painkillers such as OxyContin.
The new formulation described in Dr. Sackler's patent could prove very lucrative thanks to a steady increase in the number of drug addicts treated with buprenorphine, considered a better alternative to other opiate substitutes such as methadone.
Last year, the main version of buprenorphine, sold under the brand name Suboxone, generated US $ 877 million in sales for the British pharmaceutical group Indivior.
Dr. Sackler's patent, issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office in January, acknowledges the existence of the opioid crisis, which claimed more than 42,000 lives in 2016.
"While opioids have always been known to be useful in the treatment of pain, they also have the potential for dependence," says the patent. "Thus, if opioids are taken by healthy human subjects with addicting behavior, they can lead to psychological and physical dependence."
He adds, "The constant pressure on drug users to obtain money for drug purchases and concomitant criminal activity is increasingly recognized as a major factor in counteracting effective and sustainable withdrawal and abstinence from drugs.
However, the patent makes no mention of the fact that Purdue Pharma has been seized more than a thousand lawsuits for fueling the epidemic, which is denied by society and the Sackler family.
"It's reprehensible what Purdue Pharma did for our public health," said Luke Nasta, director of Camelot, an addiction treatment center in Staten Island, New York. He added that the Sackler family "should not be allowed to sell other synthetic opiates, including opioid substitutes."
Buprenorphine is already prescribed to opioid addicts in the form of tablets or thin films that dissolve under the tongue in less than seven minutes. These "sublingual" formulations are used to prevent addicts from accumulating a stock of pills that they can sell or use to empty later.
The patent describes a new, improved form of buprenorphine that would occur in a wafer disintegrating faster than existing versions – perhaps in just a few seconds.
The initial application was made by Purdue Pharma and Dr. Sackler is among the inventors alongside five others, some of whom work or have worked for Sackler's group of drug manufacturing companies.
"Drug addicts sometimes still try to divert these sublingual tablets of buprenorphine by removing them from the mouth," says the patent application. "There is still a need for others. . . Dosage forms resistant to abuse. "
In June, the Massachusetts Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Dr. Sackler and seven other members of the Sackler family, who accused them of engaging in a "murderous and deceptive ploy to sell opioids."
Purdue and the family deny the allegations. The company points out that OxyContin has been and is still approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
"We think it's inappropriate for [Massachusetts] to substitute its judgment for the judgment of FDA regulatory, scientific and medical experts, "he said in a recent statement to the Financial Times.
Andrew Kolodny, a professor at Brandeis University who advocated for the increased use of buprenorphine to fight the opioid crisis, said Dr. Sackler's idea of "getting rich" from the patent was "very disturbing". He added, "Maybe the benefits of this patent should be used to pay any judgment or settlement in the end."
Earlier this week, Purdue donated $ 3.4 million to improve access to naloxone, an antidote for people who have just overdosed opioids.
The company has not yet filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in Massachusetts, although it has until the end of Friday to do so.
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