As drug deaths continue to surge, a Dunmore lab helps keep track

Feb. 5—Michael Coyer's computer screen gleams with the names of chemicals while a large machine designed to find them in human blood hums. Some are innocuous, like Tylenol or caffeine. Others raise red flags, like the animal tranquilizer xylazine, cocaine and fentanyl, the lethal synthetic opioid responsible for driving the ongoing epidemic that claimed at least 88 lives last year in Lackawanna County.

In Dunmore, in office space above the county coroner's office, Coyer and his team help track the epidemic.

The recently purchased Quadruple Time of Flight mass spectrometer, or Q-ToF, will help Coyer's lab stay on top of new synthetic drugs as they emerge in illicit drug markets.

"That allows me to look for what are called 'unknown unknowns,' " said Coyer, Ph.D., the director of Dunmore's Northern Tier Research. "Our other instruments, we sort of have to know what we're looking for."

The facility screens and analyzes blood samples from overdose victims to figure out what is in their blood at the time they died, among other work. Established in the early 1990s, it's one of seven labs in Pennsylvania licensed by the state Department of Health to screen and analyze blood and serum for controlled substances, according to state records. Coyer said he has a decades-long business relationship with the county.

Luzerne County contracts with the laboratory for testing with Children & Youth, said Deputy Controller Thomas Sokola.

Driven by fentanyl, the number of drug overdose deaths continues to rise. As of Friday, there were 88 confirmed drug overdose deaths in Lackawanna County in 2022, of which fentanyl was present in 54. Another 20 deaths remain under investigation.

In 2021, a record 110 people died in Lackawanna County of drug overdoses, according to OverdoseFreePA.

Coyer estimated he handles about 300 cases from coroners each year. Lackawanna County spent $568,196.21 on 742 coroner cases at Northern Tier Research since 2019, a review of invoice summaries shows.

The spectrometer helps the technician find unknown substances in blood and compares the chemical against those logged in libraries. The computer then tells the user what the substance likely is, which the lab then confirms through more analysis.

The upgrade may be beneficial in helping identify deadly new synthetic substances that already are emerging in illicit drug markets outside Lackawanna County.

In June, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sounded the alarm in Washington, D.C., about the appearance of nitazenes, a synthetic opioid sourced from China and mixed into other drugs, like heroin or fentanyl. The nitazenes are similar in potency to fentanyl, the DEA said.

Philadelphia health officials first found a type of nitazene, N-desethyl isotonitazene, in December in four samples sold on the streets, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported last month. Health officials in Philadelphia warned of nitazenes as much as 40 times more potent than fentanyl.

"It's out there and it's bound to come," Lackawanna County District Attorney Mark Powell said.

Nitazenes, some as much as 40 times more potent than fentanyl, were first detected in Philadelphia in December, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Nitazene has not shown up in local toxicological screenings, Coyer said. Fentanyl is likely to remain the dominant narcotic as nitazenes are more difficult to make, he said.

"They can make it but (fentanyl) is so entrenched in the culture, just like heroin was entrenched in the culture," he said.

Contact the writer: jkohut@timesshamrock.com, 570-348-9100, x5187; @jkohutTT on Twitter.