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Healthcare Symposium Sheds Light on Managing the Opioid Crisis

biotechconnections

Over the past years, opioid addiction and news of accidental overdoses have been on the rise nationwide. To promote a discussion to potentially relieve the burden on the healthcare system, BCLA hosted this year’s Healthcare Symposium titled, “Opioid Epidemic and Alternative Pain Treatments”, on May 22nd at the UCLA CNSI auditorium.

The keynote presentations, gave the audience a good overview of the current opioid crisis but also highlighted approaches to alleviate the problem. Our first keynote speaker Larissa Mooney, MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Director at the UCLA Addiction Medicine Clinic, discussed the new CDC guidelines for opioid prescription and several FDA-approved abuse-deterrent and resistant formulas in face of the opioid crisis. Roger Crystal, MD, CEO of Opiant Pharmaceuticals, proudly presented their FDA-approved NARCAN® and other promising opioid overdose reversal agents they have in their pipeline.

Next, Wen Dombrowski, MD, Chief Convergence Officer at CATALAIZE, and our panelists navigated the audience through current treatments and prevention options with non-medication chronic pain management. Our distinguished panelists Monica Soni, MD, Director of Specialty Care at LA County Department of Health Services; Len May, President of EndoCanna Health; Sean Young, PhD, Executive Director of the UC Institute for Prediction Technology and Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Stephanie Taylor, PhD, Director of the national VA Complementary and Integrative Health Evaluation Center and Associate Director of Health Services Research for the Los Angeles VA; answered several questions during a lively discussion with the audience. The slideshow displayed during this panel discussion can be found here.

Last but not the least, Lukas Kowalik, PhD, Business Development Officer at the UCLA Technology Development Group, spoke from his vast experience of commercializing sought-after academic discoveries.

We are grateful for our sponsors for helping us raise public awareness to the current opioid epidemic: LA BioStart at Cal State LA and UCLA Career Center. We look forward to our next collaboration!

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