One of these new chemicals was fentanyl, which Janssen and his team first synthesized in 1959 by experimenting with the chemical structure of an analgesic called pethidine. He was hoping to find an alternative to morphine, the reigning pain reliever of its time. Janssen tested the effectiveness of fentanyl on lab mice, placing the mice on hot plates and slowly turning up the heat to gauge their reactions.
Fentanyl was particularly profitable for Janssen Pharmaceutica. Doctors found it superior to morphine because of the way it acted. Like morphine, it bound with a receptor in the brain (which we now call the “mu” receptor) to cause pain relief. But fentanyl came on faster, was much more powerful, and wasn’t as likely to cause nausea. “Fentanyl,” Janssen later wrote, “made it possible for the first time to perform lengthy operations and, together with its successors, heralded a revolution in the operating theatre. Without this compound and its analogue, sufentanil, open-heart surgery [as performed today] would not be possible.”
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