Chemistry’s Emily Mevers and her undergraduate students are investigating if a replacement drug for pain is right under our feet in Stadium Woods
This past spring we tagged along with Assistant Professor Emily Mevers of the Department of Chemistry and undergraduate students Rose Campbell, Paige Banks, Lois Kyei, and Karla Piedl as they looked for and collected millipedes (Andrognathus corticarius) on the grounds of Stadium Woods.
The search is part of an effort to see if a chemical that millipedes excrete when frightened by a predator, specifically ants, disorientating them, could potentially lead to a new medication that would potentially replace opioids and other painrelief medications.
“I really liked this lab looking in natural places in the environment, and then also being able to get out of the lab and be outside be in nature."
— Paige Banks, student
"Seventy percent of your drugs that you take, that are prescribed to you, are actually from nature," Mevers said. "We’re hoping to develop a new, nonaddictive analgesic — something to treat pain. We all know the issue with opioids and that’s not a real source or a solution to the problem. So can we find a molecule that treats pain in a non-addictive way that doesn’t have any other negative effects that other pain medicines have."