New Stockton lab discovery shows promise in fighting fentanyl crisis
STOCKTON — Fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45.
It's a crisis that has impacted so many lives and families, but a new way of fighting fentanyl overdoses could be coming out of Stockton.
In one of the labs inside the School of Pharmacy at the University of the Pacific is where a team discovered a new way to deliver naloxone, the chemical in Narcan that is used to combat overdoses, that they say will save even more lives.
"I consider it the greatest achievement of my career so far," Dr. Hala Aldawod said.
HD-5 is a molecule that takes naloxone and creates a sort of sprinkler system for it inside the body.
The H in the name is for Dr. Hala Aldawod.
"This project, it was the celebration for my PhD," Dr. Aldawod said.
Dr. Aldawod called this molecule she's been working on the "greatest achievement of my career so far" and said it has "the potential to save lives."
Narcan lasts up to two hours as a nose spray, but studies show that HD-5, in the form of an injection, can distribute naloxone for up to a week in the body, preventing fentanyl overdoses for longer and more often.
"My colleagues will ask me, 'How are you successful in a place like Stockton?' " Dr. Mamoun Alhamasheh recalled. "We work as a family. We don't compete. We work together."
Dr. Alhamasheh helped and supervised Dr. Aldawod and her colleagues as they worked on HD-5. An idea that came about four years ago.
"The major drive for me was the devastating impact that opioids and fentanyl have, especially like the accidental use and overdose among high school kids," Dr. Aldawod said.
In 2023, approximately 107,000 Americans died of a drug overdose, with over 70% of them from an opioid like fentanyl.
"As scientists, our role is to discover medicine that will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people," Dr. Alhamasheh said.
While it may be a while before we can see HD-5 be used publicly, Dr. Alhamasheh and his team are already thinking of other ways it can be used.
"We hope that it will be a technology that we can apply for different kinds of drugs for patients," she said.
The researchers went from blood samples to testing HD-5 on rats, where they say they found success. With enough funding and backing, this could go to human trials down the line.