# New therapeutic approaches to identifying molecules for opioid abuse treatment

> **NIH NIH R43** · COLLABORATIONS PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. · 2022 · $256,220

## Abstract

Project Summary
Collaborations Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a small business focused on developing treatments for difficult to treat
diseases. The ongoing overreliance on opioids for chronic pain despite their poor ability to improve function has
contributed to a significant and alarming epidemic of opioid overdose deaths and addictions in recent years.
Despite the overwhelming addiction crisis, few therapies exist, and with low efficacy. Thus, a critical unmet need
is an effective and safe treatment for opioid abuse disorders. Recent research has suggested that psychedelics
are also capable of reducing drug-dependence, including opioid abuse, and that serious adverse effects are
extremely rare. This drug abuse cessation is linked to the induction of neuritogenesis and increased
neuroplasticity, a hallmark of psychedelics. While the psychedelic experience and neuroplasticity induction
appear interlinked, several analogs of psychedelics have been proposed which induce neuroplasticity and drug-
avoidance while seemingly lacking the psychedelic experience. Although few in number, these analogs have
been named “psychoplastogens” and are promising candidates for treatment of opioid drug abuse. The de-
coupling of the psychedelic experience and neuroplasticity induction is linked to receptor specificity as
psychoplastogens are specific to 5HT2A. Here, we propose to use a combination of generative machine learning
models with our extensive experience of supervised machine models to generate new analogs of psychedelics
that will have improved 5-HT2A specificity, ADME properties, and are easily synthesizable to rapidly expand the
pool of known psychoplastogens, significantly increasing potential therapeutic options for opioid abuse
treatment.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10385998
- **Project number:** 1R43DA055419-01
- **Recipient organization:** COLLABORATIONS PHARMACEUTICALS, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** SEAN EKINS
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $256,220
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-04-15 → 2024-04-14

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10385998

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10385998, New therapeutic approaches to identifying molecules for opioid abuse treatment (1R43DA055419-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10385998. Licensed CC0.

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