New long-acting local anaesthetic derived from algae effectively blocks pain in surgical patients
Thursday, February 24, 2011 - 15:20
in Health & Medicine
A U.S.-Chile collaboration is bringing surgical patients closer to having a long-acting local anaesthetic. In a randomised, double-blind trial, patients given neosaxitoxin, a new local anaesthetic derived from algae, had significantly less postoperative pain and recovered about two days sooner than those given the commonly used local anaesthetic bupivacaine. Based on this finding, Children's Hospital Boston, a co-investigator on the study, has signed a collaboration agreement with biotech start-up company Proteus SA (Santiago, Chile) to move the new anaesthetic toward clinical adoption...