''Winning this competition will allow us to develop a new treatment and test its effectiveness in human patients,'' Ailsa McGregor, a member of the winning team, said.
Researchers were ''really looking forward to getting the project moving'', she added.
Dr McGregor, a senior lecturer in pharmacy, will work with Associate Prof Natalie Medlicott, also of pharmacy, and Prof Paul Glue, of psychological medicine, to develop a novel medication for severe pain that will increase pain control, prevent tolerance and reduce side effects.
The competition was now in its fifth year.
The win will provide about $75,000 to enable the team to undertake pre-clinical research this year.
Early next year, it hopes to begin clinical studies of 40 healthy patients at Dunedin Hospital, to test the efficacy of the drug in managing post-surgical pain.
Twenty patients would be treated with the new drug and a 20-strong control group would be treated using the best existing drug treatment.
If that phase showed benefits, clinical trials would also be considered for specific groups of patients with different health conditions, with funding support from Otago Innovation Ltd, the university's research commercialisation arm.
Health Sciences associate dean, research commercialisation, Prof Ian Tucker said the translational research grant was an initiative to help researchers in the pursuit of research that ''translates into societal benefits''.
About one in six New Zealanders lived with severe pain, and conditions that produced severe pain had a significant impact on patients' quality of life and were a challenge to treat.
Dr McGregor said the mechanisms underlying these pain conditions were ''complex and resistant to treatment with conventional pain-relieving agents like paracetamol and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories''.
Treatment for severe post-operative pain and pain associated with arthritis, nerve injury and cancer was ''typically with opioid drugs''.
Opioids were effective, but were associated with significant dose-limiting side effects including constipation, nausea, sedation and the development of tolerance and dependence.
Their winning idea may change all of this.
She was working to take knowledge from the laboratory and ''apply it to health problems to generate real-life solutions with tangible benefits'', she said.
