Opioids relieve chronic pain for millions, but are highly addictive and can cause potentially fatal side effects. In a paper published this week (August 17) in Nature, scientists identify a compound that could offer pain relief without risk of addiction. It’s the latest promising drug development in an effort to curb a growing opioid epidemic in the United States.

Researchers from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany discovered the drug using a virtual model of the receptor in the brain that binds opioids. The team simulated the interaction of 3 million different compounds with this receptor. “We tried to look for molecules that would still bind to this 3-D structure, but are as far away from morphine and codeine as possible,” study coauthor Aashish Manglik of Stanford University told NPR’s Shots.

Based on those simulations, Manglik and colleagues tested 23...