For wounded combat soldiers on the front lines of this nation’s wars, pain relief requires a delicate balance.

One primary option is morphine — the well-known painkiller just as well-known for its hazardous side effects, which include slowed breathing, slowed heart rate, seizure, convulsion, severe weakness or dizziness, lightheadedness and fainting.

But on the battlefield, those side effects can be dangerous and, at times, deadly.

That is until a new drug — geared toward reducing the downside of the painkiller and currently being developed by researchers at the University — is available.

The research team, led by Dr. James Baker, director of the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences, aims to minimize morphines potentially hazardous and even fatal side effects with the implementation of this new drug.

The drug utilizes nanotechnology by using ultra-small polymer particles to “release morphine and an antidote automatically in response to physiological clues,” Baker wrote in an e-mail interview.

“The drug gives long-term relief from pain for wounded soldiers while preventing overdoses with pain medication that might kill them,” Baker wrote.

Baker and his team are working on the drug through a grant of about $1.3 million administered by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Dr. Baohua Huang, a researcher on the team and an internal medicine research investigator for the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute, explained the team’s purpose.

“We have to design the crucial link or system that will trigger the release of a therapeutic drug and under a specific condition,” Huang said.

The researchers tested many different compounds in hopes of finding an effective pro-drug, a modified therapeutic drug that can be converted to another drug under a specific condition, according to a press release from the University of Michigan Health System.

The team wanted to use a pro-drug that could become Naloxone, a drug used to prevent morphine’s negative side effects.

Huang said the Naloxone compound will only activate when blood oxygen levels become too low.

“Our drug design will release an anti-morphine drug that will reduce the morphine effects, but the drug will only release when there’s a problem,” Huang said. “The problem becomes a trigger of release of the anti-morphine drug. When the problem disappears, that means the oxygen in the blood has come back to a normal level.”

If the drug proves effective for humans, it will be a crucial advancement in the medical world and especially on the battlefield, where it will allow for easier administering of pain relief to wounded soldiers.

“Sometimes (a soldier) will be in a remote place that makes it hard to retreat to a hospital,” Huang said. “Soldiers can give themselves this pro-drug with morphine without causing any problems.”

Besides helping soldiers and becoming a source of pain control among other patients, it could also prevent morphine addiction.

“(The drug) may help pain control in many medical settings while preventing overdoses and potentially avoiding addiction,” Baker wrote.

The research team is still conducting studies and will soon be performing animal and toxicological tests. It is not yet known when the drug will be available for humans.

“As for the timeline (for humans), it’s hard to say, maybe in five years,” Huang said. “To move from a clinical trial to a real patient is still a long way to go.”