A new approach to identifying compounds may lead to the next generation of anesthetics, according to a study published in the February issue of Anesthesiology.
Researchers used a screening process that allowed them to test more than 350,000 compounds for their potential to serve as anesthetic agents, in collaboration with the Chemical Genomics Center of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
Among the 350,000, researchers found 2,600 compounds that had strong interactions with apoferritin, a surrogate anesthetic binding protein target. A subset of the 2,600 were chosen based on structural criteria to be tested for anesthetic activity, first on tadpoles and then on mice. Researchers concluded that two compounds could potentially serve as anesthetics.
"The anesthetics identified by this approach require further development before they can be considered for use in the O.R.," said Roderic Eckenhoff, MD, lead author of the study and professor of anesthesiology and critical care at Philadelphia-based Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "However, the study results show that novel anesthetics do exist, and that we need not restrict ourselves to small modifications of existing drugs."
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