Show Notes
Three hundred thousand American deaths in three years…and the chemistry is still evolving. If the cartels turned the lab into the battlefield, why haven’t we brought our own defenses?
In this investigation, host Michael Brown sits down with Collin Gage, CEO and co-founder of ARMR Sciences, to unpack a controversial but potentially game-changing idea: an immunotherapy “vaccine” designed to block fentanyl from reaching the brain. Gage explains the planned Phase I/II human trial, why military and first responders could be the first beneficiaries, and how a platform could expand to multivalent shields against carfentanil and emerging analogs.
We press the hard questions: pharmaceutical-grade versus “cartel” fentanyl, risk-compensation behavior, and whether the U.S. should treat this as biodefense.
Expect an unflinching discussion about creating anti-narco-chemistry that removes the “high” and, with it, the business model. It’s exactly the kind of debate a country losing hundreds of people each day must have, if we want a fentanyl-free future.
Views expressed in this material are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rigaku Analytical Devices.
More from The Opioid Matrix: A Journey Into the Rabbit Hole
Is the fentanyl crisis simply a drug epidemic—or something far more strategic?
In this episode of The Opioid Matrix, host Michael Brown speaks with Ralph Ornelas, a 36-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, about the domestic networks helping fuel America’s fentanyl crisis.
In this episode of The Opioid Matrix, Michael Brown speaks with Adam Castillo, a former U.S. Marine officer, founder of AGS Myanmar, and former president of the American business community in Myanmar. Adam is also the author of Finding Our Voice: A Story of Leadership in Crisis and the American Spirit Abroad, a leadership memoir shaped by his experience guiding an American business community through Myanmar’s post-coup collapse.
What happens when a fully synthetic drug turns organized crime into an industrial-scale, cross-border killing machine?
What happens when the world’s most dangerous networks evolve faster than the systems meant to stop them?