Asimadoline
Asimadoline is a proprietary small molecule therapeutic, originally discovered by Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany. Asimadoline was originally developed to treat peripheral pain such as arthritis. Asimadoline is an orally administered agent that acts as a kappa opioid receptor agonist. It has shown encouraging clinical efficacy for the treatment of IBS in a barostat study in IBS patients and has the potential for treating other gastrointestinal diseases.