Pain Therapeutics' Window of Opportunity

Executive Summary

Pain Therapeutics Inc., which started up in 1998 and went public just two years later in a hot market, thinks it can turn Purdue Pharma's patent problems to its own advantage-and go it one better. Long before the OxyContin patents were deemed invalid, Purdue was struggling with the fact that its extended-release painkiller had become a drug of abuse. People looking for a quick high found they could get one by crushing "Oxies" or dissolving them in alcohol--thus circumventing the innovation in formulation that made OxyContin so effective at treating pain. Pain Therapeutics believes it has a way around the abuse problem.