Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc. (OTC QB: SRNE; Sorrento) announced today that it has acquired Sherrington Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Sherrington), a privately-held company focused on the development of a chronic pain treatment for end-stage cancer patients and other severe pain indications.

Sherrington’s drug candidate, known as Resiniferatoxin, is a non-opiate, ultra potent and selective agonist of the TRPV-1 receptor. A single injection of the compound is expected to permanently block the transmission of pain signals without impairing the mental or physical faculties of the patient, common side effects of opiate treatment. Resiniferatoxin was recently highlighted in the July 2013 issue of Scientific American . Resiniferatoxin is currently in an investigator-sponsored Phase 1/2 clinical trial at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under a company sponsored Collaborative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). Sorrento plans to initiate additional clinical studies to rapidly advance the drug.

“Sorrento’s drug development pipeline now includes an additional clinical stage program to go along with its late stage program Cynviloq™ and robust pipeline of fully human therapeutic antibodies”, said Henry Ji, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Sorrento. “Resiniferatoxin is a great fit with our mission to treat cancer patients with targeted and selective treatments. End-stage cancer pain is a particularly high unmet medical need and the early data with Resiniferatoxin are very encouraging.”