Mer­ck gives King's Col­lege Lon­don, Well­come Trust up to $340M in deal to de­vel­op non-opi­oid painkillers

The hy­per­po­lar­iza­tion-ac­ti­vat­ed cyclic nu­cleotide-gat­ed (HCN) chan­nel com­pris­es four mem­bers (HCN1-4) that are ex­pressed in the heart and ner­vous sys­tem — and while HCN4 is well un­der­stood to mod­u­late heart rate and dri­ve pace­mak­er ac­tiv­i­ty, HCN2 has emerged as a promis­ing tar­get for pain man­age­ment. To seize the po­ten­tial of in­hibit­ing the chan­nel to re­lieve pain, Mer­ck has tied up with King’s Col­lege Lon­don, hop­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion will yield a po­tent new class of painkillers with­out the dan­ger­ous side-ef­fects seen with pre­scrip­tion opi­oids.

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