LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 12, 2026) — On some winter mornings, Daniel Wermeling, Pharm.D., nurses his coffee and occasionally revisits the improbable idea that once kept him awake for more than a decade — that a medicine older than many of his students could be reborn in an easy-to-use form. When he recounts the story, he ticks through the pharmacology and the regulatory hurdles as if they were items on a grocery list. But at the center of the plot is a very unacademic image: a person kneeling beside a loved one, with seconds to spare and no time to find a vein.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when heroin and fentanyl began infiltrating the illicit drug market and overdose rates climbed, Wermeling, then a faculty member at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy, saw a critical gap. People were dying not because the overdose reversal drug naloxone didn’t work, but because it was out of reach.
“If you have someone collapsing in front of you, you do not have time to assemble a syringe,” Wermeling said. “You need something anyone can use.”
He decided naloxone needed to be needle-free, stable, easy to use and available fast. The result was AntiOp Inc., the startup he founded in 2009 to build a nasal spray version of naloxone. For 10 years, he and his collaborators tested formulations, layered device technologies and pushed through regulatory barriers. They did what larger companies had not yet done.
In 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first prescription intranasal naloxone. In 2023, the first over-the-counter version was released. Wermeling’s fingerprints were evident throughout the entire development process that made it possible.
Today, naloxone nasal spray is stocked next to epinephrine and insulin pens. It sits in glove compartments, dorm rooms and kitchen drawers.
“Naloxone used to be something an EMT carried,” Wermeling said. “Now it’s something you might find in your mother’s purse.”
The data bears this out. Americans filled more than 2.1 million naloxone prescriptions in 2023, not including over-the-counter purchases. Community programs have documented tens of thousands of overdose reversals.
The impact in Kentucky is personal. In 2023, 1,984 Kentuckians died from drug overdoses. That number is lower than the COVID-19 pandemic peak, but still one of the highest per capita in the country. Public health researchers estimate that many thousands more survived because naloxone was available.
Community-based naloxone programs documented more than 26,500 overdose reversals by 2014, and now, naloxone distribution is consistently associated with as much as 46% reductions in overdose deaths in areas where it is widely available. In a 2025 systematic review, survival rates after community-administered naloxone exceeded 95% across all settings studied. Behind every percentage point are neighbors, co-workers and friends.
Wermeling’s career reads like a roadmap of translational research — pharmacy school at the top-ranked UK College of Pharmacy, residency and fellowship at UK HealthCare, decades on the UK College of Pharmacy faculty, founder of a startup focused on intranasal therapeutics, a stack of investigational new drug applications, patents and publications, leadership roles in drug development and clinical trials administration. Between classrooms, labs and boardrooms, he moved like someone who saw urgency everywhere.
For Wermeling, it was simply a matter of fidelity to the problem.
“If you lose 90 seconds because you’re fiddling with a syringe, that’s potentially a life you don’t get back,” he said.
That intensity fueled work beyond the laboratory. Wermeling logged countless hours teaching community groups to recognize overdose symptoms and use the naloxone nasal spray. He lobbied for pharmacist-led standing orders in Kentucky, paving the way for other states to follow suit. He fielded phone calls from county police chiefs who wanted to outfit patrol cars with naloxone. He stood in front of anxious parents and walked them through the tilt-head, insert-tip and press instructions.
For decades, Wermeling helped shape a generation of pharmacists. He built foundational courses in drug development regulation, led curriculum committees, mentored residents and fellows and integrated student learning into real-world projects. His teaching philosophy mirrored his research approach: start with the real-world problem and then work backwards to find the solution.
What emerged is a portrait of persistence as professional virtue. A researcher whose most lasting contribution occurred because he saw something that had not yet happened and insisted that it could.
Naloxone is a reprieve. A second chance. And in the opioid crisis, second chances are precious.
Kentucky pharmacists now lead harm reduction and public health efforts across the state. First-year pharmacy students learn about naloxone as part of their standard skill set.
All of it traces back to the basic impulse that guided Wermeling’s work. Start at the end and work your way back. What does someone with only seconds to spare need? A stable, single-use, needle-free product requiring no mixing or measurement. And what does a nation facing a drug overdose epidemic need? Providers empowered to deliver it without barriers.
Redefining the profession
On Jan. 12, National Pharmacist Day presents an opportunity for the public to broaden its understanding of who pharmacists are and what they can do. In many ways, Wermeling’s story stretches that frame. He is not just the learned intermediary at the pharmacy counter; he is the investigator, teacher, entrepreneur, regulator and clinician who took a public health gap and translated it into usable rescue.
Pharmacy practice is problem-solving on behalf of patients. Through his pursuit of a solution, Wermeling looked at the nation’s deadliest modern epidemic and asked the most pharmacological of questions: what formulation makes help arrive faster? Then he spent a decade ensuring the answer existed.
Maybe it was not your friend, your brother or your co-worker, but it was someone’s. Someone who collapsed in a bathroom, their lips turning blue. Someone whose girlfriend heard a thud on the floor. Someone whose dad sprinted down the hallway, shouting their name. Someone who was found in the backseat of a car. Someone who was so close to death that their story was already being written.
That is who naloxone brought back. People whose lives could have ended in seconds but did not because a pharmacist put rescue in reach. Because one man, stubbornly persistent, believed you should not need medical training to save someone you love.
You may never know the names of the people whose lives were saved because of that work, but somewhere tonight, a mother is setting a place at the table for a child who almost did not make it home.
And if you ever wonder what pharmacists can do — start there. A pharmacist can save your child. Your best friend. Your spouse. They can save a life that matters to you.
Daniel Wermeling, Pharm.D., is professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. National Pharmacist Day is observed Jan. 12 annually.
The University of Kentucky has Narcan/naloxone opioid rescue kits in 60 locations across campus. The kits are in an easy-to-access box with simple instructions on how to administer the drug. A map of Naloxone kit locations is online.
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