Startup Sea4Us is close to licensing a new painkiller found in marine organisms off the Algarve coast, which could relieve the chronic pain of hundreds of millions of people globally.
Chronic pain is a disease that afflicts one in five people worldwide, a proportion that, however, is higher in the Portuguese population, Pedro Lima, researcher and scientific director of Sea4Us, told Lusa news agency.
The company is developing the first non-opioid marine painkiller that, if all goes as planned, will be effective in treating chronic pain without causing addiction or side effects, because it does not centrally affect the brain, he said.
“What we have to be developed is an alternative to opioids, morphine and the like, which do relieve pain in many cases and others don’t, but have sometimes terrible side effects,” said the neurophysiologist and marine biologist.
The future new drug is possible thanks to the particular characteristics of marine organisms that have evolved and are embedded in the rocks of caves and cavities on the Algarve coast, near Sagres, in the district of Faro.
Sagres is the primary marine sample collection site, where Sea4Us has the equipment to treat the samples in its facilities. Still, the pre-clinical development is carried out at the Physiology Laboratory of the New University of Lisbon.
The company also works in a network with other entities, such as the University of Algarve and other educational institutions in Europe, the United States, and Japan, as well as companies that develop the most diverse substances.
“Our concept is to take it [the product] to a point – we hope to reach it in a year and a half – where we can do the licensing for one of the multi-national pharmaceutical ‘sharks'” he said.
The company is now doing the tests that precede the first human clinical trials, and if everything goes as expected, it could move on to licensing, and the drugmakers could put the product on the market, which could take about five years.
Sea4Us admits that it does not have the necessary money to carry out all the human testing needed and, that, it would like to sell its project in about eighteen months at the beginning of human clinical trials.
So far, the company has already invested 1.5 to 2 million euros in this project, with the help of public funds, and hopes to continue investing in others, some of which have already begun, which will make it possible to fight against diseases such as overactive bladder, chemotherapy-induced neuropathy or epilepsy.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
