SAN ANTONIO, June 11, 2025 – Showing its leadership in addressing the opioid crisis, the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital is the state’s first to approve use of a new non-opioid medication for pain following orthopaedic and podiatric surgeries.
The effort is part of UT Health San Antonio’s “multimodal” approach to pain management, combining non-opioid medications and physical therapy, at its hospital that opened Dec. 10 to provide specialty surgery, advanced imaging and comprehensive cancer care.
The new drug suzetrigine, brand name Journavx, is not a controlled substance and avoids opioid-related side effects. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January and first became available in April.
And its manufacturer confirmed that the Multispecialty and Research Hospital is the first in Texas to add it to its approved list of inpatient medications as a first-line treatment for post-surgical pain, restricted to orthopaedic and podiatric surgical patients.
Christopher D. Chaput, MD
“At UT Health San Antonio, we are committed to newer strategies to minimize and even eliminate narcotic pain medication after surgery,” said Christopher D. Chaput, MD, vice chief of staff and chair of orthopaedic surgery at the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital. “Narcotics, in addition to the risk of addiction, have a range of other negative side effects after surgery including sedation, mental status change and constipation. Instead, we use local and regional nerve blocks, as well as newer non-narcotic medications to reduce the need for opiate based medications.
“Nursing and physical therapists can also help with pain control techniques and early mobilization, which has been shown to improve outcomes and lessen pain,” he said. “At the new Multispecialty and Research Hospital, anesthesiologists, pharmacists, nurses and surgeons are all working towards this same goal for our postoperative patients.”
The type of post-surgical pain associated with orthopaedics is the target indication for the newly approved medication, said Lee C. Rogers, DPM, clinical associate professor of orthopaedics and chief of podiatry at UT Health San Antonio.
Lee C. Rogers, DPM
“It could be spine, or a total joint or a bunion,” Rogers said. “This is a way to use innovative and effective pain management approaches that avoid opioids and their side effects.”
A national study of suzetrigine actually was done with bunion surgery, which is a common pain model for research. Rather than targeting the central nervous system of the brain and spinal cord, like opioids do, the new drug targets the peripheral nervous system, or the network of nerves that connects the central nervous system with the rest of the body.
It is comparable to hydromorphone, a potent opioid medication for moderate to severe post-operative pain, only without the narcotic side effects of addiction, tolerance, drowsiness and other issues.
“This is a significant milestone for UT Health San Antonio,” said Jeff Flowers, chief executive officer of the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital. “Offering this new non-opioid option for post-surgical pain reflects our continued commitment to compassionate, patient-centered care. By integrating the latest advances into our pain management strategy, we’re improving recovery for our patients while also reducing reliance on opioids across South Texas.”
UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital is a best-in-class hospital delivering specialty surgeries and advanced cancer care including immunologic and stem cell therapies. The hospital brings the most innovative research conducted across South Texas and features modern technology such as touchless designs and advanced artificial intelligence. It is directly connected to the Mays Cancer Center — the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in South Texas. This patient- and family-centered hospital offers a seamless health care experience and renewed hope for patients and those who love them.
UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital is part of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio), a primary driver for San Antonio’s $44.1 billion health care and biosciences sector with an annual research portfolio and sponsored program activity of more than $436 million. The university is one of the country’s leading health science and research universities with missions of teaching, research and patient care. UT Health San Antonio plans continued growth over the next five years and anticipates adding more than 1,500 higher-wage jobs to serve San Antonio, Bexar County and the South Texas region.
Stay connected with UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Traffic lanes will be consolidated in front of the Medical Arts and Research Center (MARC) on Monday, June 16, to accommodate the delivery of a T7 MRI unit at the new Center for Brain Health located at 4940 Charles Katz Drive. The $100 million Center for Brain Health is currently under construction and slated to open later this year.
The traffic lane consolidations will take place on June 16 from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and possibly into the later evening hours if needed.
The two northbound lanes in front of the MARC — from just past the first entry to the MARC to the northbound lanes on Charles Katz Drive — will be consolidated into a single lane on the southbound lanes of Floyd Curl Drive, as shown via the green arrows in the image below.
The two southbound lanes will consolidate into a single lane on Floyd Curl Drive, from Charles Katz Drive in front of the South Texas Research Facility Building to just past the entry to the MARC, as shown via the yellow arrows in the image below.
The consolidation of lanes will impact MARC employees, providers, patients, visitors, faculty, staff, students and residents.
Signage will be posted for motorists on both sides of Floyd Curl Drive.
Alternate routes
Motorists traveling northbound to the MARC can take Ewing Halsell Drive at Wurzbach Road to Hamilton Wolfe Drive to Floyd Curl Drive.
Motorists traveling southbound on Floyd Curl Drive to the MARC can turn west on Hamilton Wolfe Drive to Babcock Road, turn left and continue to Wurzbach Road, turn left, and continue to Floyd Curl Drive.
For questions, the UT Health San Antonio Police Department Communications Center can be reached at 210-567-2800, option 3.
Approximately one in 300 Americans have a pathogenic mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, placing them at an elevated risk of developing certain cancers, especially breast and ovarian cancer. Of those who develop these cancers and are treated with PARP inhibitors — a generally efficacious therapy that targets poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases that the cancer cells need for DNA repair and survival — most patients eventually develop resistance to the drug.
“This seminal discovery opens the door to understanding how some breast, prostate and ovarian cancers become resistant to an important class of cancer drugs called the PARP inhibitors. These drugs can generate tumor regressions lasting years, but ultimately almost everyone relapses due to resistance. The DNA repair complex studied in the report is a prime target for causing that resistance and, thus, is a novel target for therapy. Drugs against this complex could possibly extend the lives of cancer patients treated with PARP inhibitors,” said Robert Hromas, MD, FACP, dean of the Joe R. and Teresa Long School of Medicine (Long School of Medicine) at UT Health San Antonio.
Pivotal understanding in PARP inhibitor resistance
Understanding the processes that cause cancer drug resistance is crucial for determining which treatment option would be most appropriate and for driving the development of new therapeutic approaches, said Patrick Sung, DPhil, director of the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute and associate dean for research in the Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio.
Patrick Sung, DPhil
A study published May 22 in Science, co-led by Sung, including scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School, Columbia University Irving Medical Center and UT Health San Antonio, explains how dysfunction in a certain complex (CST complex) that is crucial to regulating how DNA breaks are repaired can lead to PARP inhibitor resistance in BRCA1-deficient cancer cells.
“Of all the things we have done, this one has the most impact on clinical practice over the long run. Everyone expects malfunction in these proteins to give rise to drug resistance, but they do not know why and how,” said Sung.
What is the CST complex?
The CST complex is made up of three proteins and is a negative regulator of a type of DNA repair called homologous recombination. This means it suppresses that type of repair and cells must choose a different repair pathway. When this complex is working properly, PARP inhibitors target BRCA-deficient cancer cells and cause them to die because they cannot repair their DNA. Because this protein complex suppresses homologous recombination, if it is mutated or silenced, tumor cells can become resistant to PARP inhibitors and continue proliferation.
First author Cody Rogers, PhD, post-doctoral research fellow at the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute at UT Health San Antonio, said the CST complex is primarily recognized as a single-strand DNA binding protein involved in regulating telomere length. However, he said, this study highlights the different ways the CST complex works to suppress homologous recombination and that mutations in this complex readily cause PARP-inhibitor resistance in BRCA1-deficient cells.
“There are two different mechanisms. When CST restricts EXO1, it requires its DNA binding activity. But when it blocks the activity of BLM-DNA2, it acts by forming a complex with BLM-DNA2 that is non-functional,” said co-first author Hardeep Kaur, PhD, senior research scientist at the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute.
Future investigation into CST complex dysfunction frequency
Sung said several investigations are underway that will continue to explore how mutations in this complex engender PARP-inhibitor resistance in BRCA1-deficient tumor cells.
“We are going to take this project to a completely different level by solving high-resolution structures of different protein complexes to try to explain why activities are either enhanced or attenuated upon complex formation, what DNA binding is for in terms of function, and so on. This is only the beginning,” Sung said.
Another step in this research will include using epidemiological data to find out how often mutation in this complex occurs, which Sung believes could be a major reason for acquired resistance to PARP inhibitor therapy. For this research, colleagues at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute — collaborators with UT Health San Antonio’s $12.6 million project program from the National Cancer Institute to explore the biological mechanisms of BRCA1, BRCA2 and related tumor suppressors — will use their database of tissue samples from about 3,000 individuals who have ovarian cancer and many of whom became resistant to PARP-inhibitor treatment.
Molecular explanation for cancer-drug resistance
“This is a crucial first step to providing an intellectual framework to understanding why defects in this particular complex, and other proteins associated with this complex, can lead to cancer-drug resistance. We are well-poised to provide a molecular explanation, and this will also form the basis of finding compounds that interfere with protein function or enhance the stability of DNA-bound protein complexes to boost the therapeutic efficacy of PARP inhibitors and other cancer drugs. Imagine if we could create a way to have CST stay on DNA longer and make BRCA1-deficient tumor cells super sensitive to different therapeutic agents. It’s a provocative concept,” said Sung.
Cody M. Rogers et al. CTC1-STN1-TEN1 controls DNA break repair pathway choice via DNA end resection blockade.Science388,881-888(2025).DOI:10.1126/science.adt3034
Virginia Kaklamani, MD, Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, and leader of the breast cancer program at the Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center, was interviewed for this news segment.
Andrew Brenner, MD, PhD, professor and chair of neuro-oncology research at the Mays Cancer Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, was interviewed for this news segment.
Yajaira Johnson-Esparza, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist and clinical associate professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, was interviewed for this news segment.
