Mutant mice resist morphine’s appeal

From Orlando, Fla., at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience

Morphine is a powerful painkilling drug with a well-known downside. It has “this nasty side effect of causing addiction if used inappropriately,” says neuroscientist Anthony Basile, who recently moved from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., to the biotech company Alkermes in Cambridge, Mass.

A batch of genetically engineered mice that Basile and his colleagues created could open new ways to blocking morphine addiction.