Naloxegol

Naloxegol (INN; PEGylated naloxol; trade names Movantik and Moventig) is a peripherally-selective opioid antagonist developed by AstraZeneca, licensed from Nektar, for the treatment of opioid-induced constipation. It was approved in 2014 in adult patients with chronic, non-cancer pain. Doses of 25 mg were found safe and well tolerated for 52 weeks. When given concomitantly with opioid analgesics, naloxegol reduced constipation-related side effects, while maintaining comparable levels of analgesia.

Chemically, naloxegol is a pegylated (polyethylene glycol-modified) derivative of α-naloxol. Specifically, the 5-α-hydroxyl group of α-naloxol is connected via an ether linkage to the free hydroxyl group of a monomethoxy-terminated n=7 oligomer of PEG, shown extending at the lower left of the molecule image at right. The "n=7" defines the number of two-carbon ethylenes, and so the chain length, of the attached PEG chain, and the "monomethoxy" indicates that the terminal hydroxyl group of the PEG is "capped" with a methyl group. The pegylation of the 5-α-hydroxyl side chain of naloxol prevents the drug from crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB). As such, it can be considered the antithesis of the peripherally-acting opiate loperamide which is utilized as an opiate-targeting anti-diarrheal agent that does not cause traditional opiate side-effects due to its inability to accumulate in the central nervous system in normal subjects.