by Carmie Carpio,Asianjournal .com, Exclusive Stories, July 14, 2007

MAKATI CITY -- After years of tedious research, Filipino scientist Dr. Baldomero Olivera and his team at the University of Utah discovered a major breakthrough in pain management. Now, deadly pain might have finally met its match in Ziconotide (trade name Prialt).

The breakthrough research was presented by none other than Olivera himself to doctors, scientists, investors, students and the media gathered at the Filipinas Heritage Museum on July 6. His talk, "Turning Killers into Pain Killers", was part of Innovation Forum, a series of bi-monthly forums on various technologies sponsored by the Ayala Foundation and InfoDev.

This major discovery opens a new drug pipeline for pain and other serious diseases. Olivera is among the few scientists who have chosen to tap animal wildlife as a pharmacological source of treatment.

Olivera developed a keen interest in seashells as a young boy in the Philippines. He would gather and bring them home so he could compare them with the diagrams in the pages of his books on marine life.

One particular seashell, the cone snail, became the focus of Olivares and his team. Studying them had been like second nature to Olivares since cone snails are abundant in tropical countries like the Philippines. The team's curiosity was particularly aroused by the duality of the seashell being exquisite on the outside but highly lethal on the inside. After further research, they found out that the cone snail's venom which contains conotoxins has an equally antidotal effect. Conotoxins is now being considered to yield new drugs for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and other brain disorders aside from pain.

Moreover, Olivares' interest in sea cone snails became instrumental in his discovery of a new pharmaceutical class called conopeptides, the active ingredient in Ziconotide. And in 1992, Olivera's team was able to determine the analgesic-like qualities of conopeptide. From there, Ziconotide was made available to the public via Prialt.

Before Prialt, there was morphine, a highly potent opiate analgesic drug that effectively relieves severe pain. Morphine, however, is a narcotic - a controlled substance and therefore not readily accessible to those who need urgent relief from extreme pain.

Prialt, on the other hand, has none of the habit-forming qualities of morphine. Administered via a spinal pump, patients now have a safer pain-killing alternative. Prialt is believed to be more powerful than morphine. In recent years, Prialt has been the better choice for the treatment or management of pain caused by a variety of diseases such as AIDS, cancer, epilepsy, Alzheimer's.

The US Food & Drug Administration approved Prialt for severe chronic pain in December 2004. Formerly known as Neurex, it was bought in 1998 by Ireland's Elan Pharmaceuticals for $700 million. In 2005, sales reached $6.1 million, and then doubled in the succeeding year.

Olivera's three decades of dedication to developing drugs from animal wildlife earned him this year's "Scientist of the

Year" award from the Harvard Foundation. In that span of time he had already published 158 medical abstracts on conotoxins. He had been teaching Biology in the University of Utah since the 1970s where he is currently associate professor and, of course, a renowned scientist.

His colorful career began after finishing Summa Cum Laude at the University of the Philippines in 1960. He then went on to graduate school and earned his PhD in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. He furthered his specialization doing postdoctoral work at Stanford University.

Olivera then returned to the Philippines and became a research associate professor of Biochemistry at the UP College of Medicine. In 1970, he returned to the US to start teaching in Utah where he has been consistently awarded the title of "Distinguished Professor of Biology" since 1992.

Sadly, Olivera wasn't able to patent his research. Consequently, he never profited from the sales of Prialt. But Olivera saw that as a challenge. To recoup his investment, in 1996 he founded the Utah-based startup group Cognetix. This pharmaceutical and research company had been developing four conopeptide compounds to treat pain and myocardial infraction.

Olivera now serves as director of the Olivera Lab and has since been leading the way in further research and development of conotoxins - a technological advancement that will definitely benefit mankind.

Remus Mark A. Carballo

[Travel Specialist]-------

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