Dr. Torralva is a board-certified anesthesiologist and specialist in Addiction Medicine with over 30 years in clinical medicine. He has extensive expertise in pharmacology, invasive monitoring, and CNS drug delivery of potent opioids and anesthetic agents, specifically fentanyl and its analogues. In 2018, seeing the need for new treatments for fentanyl and fentanyl analogue (F/FA) overdose treatment he started TMT and began self-funded, contract research work with the Portland VA to investigate the underlying molecular mechanisms of fentanyl toxicity.

Over the last 6 years Dr. Torralva, working with his research team, has demonstrated the interaction of F/FAs at non-opioid receptor targets that control the larynx muscles and vocal cords during respiration (open and close the vocal cords during breathing). He currently serves as an active faculty member at OHSU and the Portland VA as a research scientist-clinician and as a staff physician at CODA (Oregon’s largest provider of substance use disorder treatment), treating opioid use disorder and polysubstance use.

Dr. Torralva continues his ongoing contracted work with Portland Veterans Administration senior pharmacology researchers developing drugs that target F/FA induced toxicity and overdose. It is his intention to continue to develop these novel formulations for F/FA overdose reversal and for chemical weapon countermeasures.