The Virginia Biosciences Health Research Corp., known as the Virginia Catalyst, announced Monday it is giving a $500,000 grant to a project focused on the treatment and care of patients recovering from opioid overdoses
The project team includes Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Tech, Inova Health System and Indivior Inc., a global pharmaceutical company based in Richmond. Indivior will provide a matching grant of $500,000.
The goal of the project is to develop a treatment procedure for opioid patients to reduce repeat overdose rates and death, according to Dr. F. Gerard Moeller, who directs VCU’s Institute for Drug and Alcohol studies. “We believe that our project will be the first to test medication treatment initiated in the emergency room after an opioid overdose followed by seamless outpatient treatment with a new once-monthly injectable medication for chronic treatment of opioid use disorder. Our goal is to test whether this new paradigm significantly reduces repeat overdose rates and death,” Moeller said in a statement.
