Avoiding Adverse Opioid Outcomes with Proactive Precision Care

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PROJECT SUMMARY FOR PREDICATE STTR PHASE I GRANT Perioperative and prescribed opioids often result in costly and unpredictable adverse effects, including life threatening respiratory depression and long-term opioid use/misuse in vulnerable patients. The US FDA warns against the use of codeine and tramadol in children due to postoperative anoxic brain injuries and deaths, and in nursing mothers due to serious breathing problems and infantile death. There is an urgent and unmet critical need for proactive risk identification and personalized precision analgesia to improve safety and effectiveness of opioids in vulnerable populations. Proactive precision medicine, including preoperative genotyping and personalized analgesia based on scientific evidence; regulatory warnings; CPIC guidelines; cost-effectiveness and established insurance coverage for genotyping could minimize excess opioid use and harm associated with the current trial and error, reactive medicine. Using a patent protected innovative multigene combinatorial pharmacogenetic opioid risk prediction and decision algorithm, in this Phase I STTR application, OpalGenix, Inc. proposes to validate the genetic signatures of adverse opioid outcomes in nursing mothers and their babies after cesarean deliveries. OpalGenix team will partner with academic researchers and leverage nonoverlapping NIH R01 funding (HD089458 and HD096800) to complement this STTR application to pursue the following two aims: 1) Validate and identify genetic risk factors associated with postoperative opioid adverse effects in adult women undergoing cesarean section and their breastfed neonates, and 2) Develop an insurer reimbursed multi-gene laboratory-developed test (LDT) for preoperative genetic risk prediction and decision support for pediatric and adult surgical patients to prevent adverse opioid outcomes. OpalGenix will develop a minimum viable product (MVP), a refined multi-gene panel in a CLIA certified laboratory with a robust combinatorial pharmacogenetic prediction and decision support to personalize surgical analgesia algorithm with precise opioid use in children and adults. This is expected to prevent common opioid adverse outcomes, such as vomiting and rare life threatening and compromising outcomes like respiratory depression, chronic persistent surgical pain (CPSP), opioid dependence, and opioid use disorder (OUD) in vulnerable pediatric and adult surgical cohorts. A future Phase II STTR will focus on the FDA pre-approval for a CLIA LDT to identify patients genetically pre-disposed to significant adverse opioid outcomes including overdose, OUD, and Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndome (NOWS). Based on the current opioid epidemic and projected $2.15 trillion economic burden of opioids between 2020 and 2040 in the US alone, a significant commercial market exists for OpalGenix to proactively identify and effectively reduce postoperative opioid-related adverse effects, CPSP, OUD, NOWS, and overdose while maximizing surgical pain relief in millions of Americans each year.