Treating pain in the gut and the brain can all be done with one pill.

For years, scientists have worked on drugs to inhibit a dangerous enzyme in the brain. The drug is called GCP2, which is increased in strokes and neurological dysfunction.

"The problem has been that we've developed all these drugs that don't really get to the brain very well. It's hard to get drugs across the brain blood barrier," Professor and Director at Johns Hopkins Drug Discovery Barbara Slusher said.

Decades of research produced drugs to target the enzyme, but no way to actually deliver them to the brain.

"But about that same time, there was a group of scientists working in gastroenterology that found that this same enzyme, that we had been studying in the brain, goes way up if you have inflammatory bowel disease," Slusher said.

The neuroteam realized the drugs didn't penetrate the brain, but would likely work in the gut, which is good news because the existing IBD drugs don't help 30 percent of the patients.

"We gave them to animals that had an IBD syndrome, and we found that their symptoms got better," Slusher said.

This opened the door to inhibiting the GCP2 in the gut using oral medication.

"So, we took these potent drugs that we had made that we couldn't get to the brain, we put them orally, and they got to the gut," Slusher said.

The drug has been proven to work in multiple animal models, so Slusher and teams are in the process of establishing clinical trials and business formation preparing to go to market.