Opioid Research Group

Research topics

• Pharmacological characterization of new drugs and drug actions at opioid receptors
• Opioid analgesia; central/peripheral mechanisms in pain models; therapeutical targeting of the opioid system for pain; novel opioid drugs as potent analgesics with improved tolerability profile
• Immunosuppressive and antitumor effects of opioids; opioid effects on cellular signaling in immune cells and cancer cells; opioid and non-opioid mechanisms
• New generation of small molecules and their therapeutic potential
• Structure-function-activity relationship studies on new ligands
• Novel pharmacological tools

Research projects and grants (selected)

2011 - 2015
Austrian Science Fund (FWF: TRP19-B18): Opioid analgesics for improved pain control (Project leader)

2011 - 2012
Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy Prize 2010: Development of new opioid analgesics with reduced side effects (Project associate)

2011 - 2014
Tyrolean Research Fund (TWF - UNI-404/949): Therapeutical potential of targeting the peripheral mu opioid receptors for treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases (Project leader)

2013 - 2015
Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research (ÖAD) (Austria-Poland, PL13/2013): Development of novel therapies based on peripheral mu opioid receptor agonists for the treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases (Project leader)

2015 - 2016
Tyrolean Research Fund (TWF - UNI-0404/1596): Investigations on the functional selectivity of oxymorphone analogues and implications for the development of safer analgesics (Project leader)

2015 - 2016
University of Innsbruck Förderungsbeiträge Aktion D. Swarovski: The potential of targeting functional selectivity of the mu opioid receptor for the development of improved opioid analgesics (Project leader)

2016 - 2017
Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research (ÖAD) (“Amadée”: Austria – France, FR 12/2016): Structure-functional activity relationship studies on morphinans interacting with the µ-opioid receptor (Project leader)

2016 - 2022
Austrian Science Fund (FWF - I024630) Neuropeptide engineering for improved chronic pain treatment (Project leader)

2017 - 2022
Austrian Science Fund (FWF - P304300): Modulation of the kappa opioid system in temporal lobe epilepsy - separating anticonsulvant and aversive effects (National partner)

2018 - 2023
Austrian Science Fund (FWF - P305920): Targeting the kappa opioid system to treat TLE (National partner)

2020 - 2024
Austrian Science Fund (FWF - I 4697): Safer analgesics by modulation of the kappa opioid receptor (Project leader)

Publications in Pubmed

Bachelor's Programme Pharmacy

Trenn- und Analysenmethoden organischer Arzneistoffe (740151)

 Arzneistoff- und Arzneimittelanalytik (740152)

Bachelorarbeit in der Pharmazie (740010, 740055)

Master's Programme Pharmacy

Neue Forschungsergebnisse in der Pharmazie (740133, 740173)

Chemische Diagnostik (740131)

PhD Program "Pharmaceutical Sciences"

Aktuelle Aspekte der Arzneimittelentwicklung I (740952)

Analyse eigener Forschungsergebnisse V (740927, 740958)

Diskussion aktueller Forschungsergebnisse (740929, 740958)

Betreuung Bachelorarbeiten und  Masterarbeiten  im Fach Pharmakologie (z.B. Opioidforschung, Schmerzforschung, Arzneimittelentwicklung, GPCR-signalling)

Bilateral Austria-Flemish Joint Research Project

“Neuropeptide Engineering for Improved Chronic Pain Treatment”

Chronic pain remains one of the main challenges in human medicine at the beginning of the third millennium. Incapacitating pain is a constant backdrop in daily life, resulting in personal suffering, high health costs and economic burden for the society. Around 20-30% of all people worldwide suffer from chronic pain, and will certainly continue to grow as population ages. Central goals in chronic pain control aim to provide pain relief of adequate efficacy and duration.

The current pharmacotherapy of chronic pain has proven to offer unsatisfactory solutions and stresses the need for alternative mechanism-based treatment strategies. This project comprises theoretical and experimental work undertaken in the fields of pain research, analgesic drug discovery and opioid pharmacology, aiming to identify newly designed opioid drugs with reliable target-oriented pharmacology, efficacy, and safer use for the management of chronic pain conditions. The project is based on the knowledge that natural ligands which modulate pain in humans are neuropeptides (endorphins, enkephalins, etc.). Without chemical modifications to provide enhanced stability and selectivity, neuropeptides are poorly suited for clinical applications. The innovative research avenue consists of the judicious engineering of neuropeptides to generate stable and selective “peptidemimetics” as novel analgesics with improved pharmacology and safety profiles. The strategy is based on the concept of multitarget ligands with a well-chosen activity and in which two active peptide pharmacophores are combined into one molecule. They can interact with multiple biological targets to induce a desired activity at each individual target, to prolong the analgesic activity and to provide more general painkillers active in acute and chronic pain. Drugs with such novel biological profiles are expected to have medical benefits for the treatment of pain.

Multidisciplinary, synergistic strategies are applied to achieve the goals of the planned research, where state-of the-art methodologies are used ranging from computational modeling to medicinal chemistry to pharmacology and disease animal models, suitable to endow the proposed research with high translational potential.

Scientific teams led by Mariana Spetea (Opioid Research Group, University of Innsbruck https://www.uibk.ac.at/de/pharmazie/phchem/opioid/) and Steven Ballet (Research Group of Organic Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussel https://orgc.research.vub.be/) are combining their know-how and long-standing expertise in achieving the goals of the research program.