Battling the US opioid epidemic
Adapt pharma’s naloxone nasal spray makes treating overdoses easier
Sixty million Americans take opioids, with around 20 million at risk of overdosing. The US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) counted 42,000 deaths from opioid overdoses in 2016, with 40% from legally prescribed drugs.
There is a fast acting antidote to overdoses, and Irish company Adapt Pharma developed a version that can be delivered as a nasal spray rather than an intravenous injection. That opens the treatment up to being used by non-specialists such as police, firefighters, or family members. Its success led Emergent Biosolutions to buy out Adapt in 2018 for $635 million (£491 million) in cash and shares.