Oklahoma's Purdue Settlement Fund Is Building Labs in Tulsa

Construction is under way on a building in northeast Tulsa that will hold the offices and laboratories of the National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment, the nonprofit Oklahoma created with $270 million from its 2019 opioid settlement with Purdue Pharma. Seven years after that deal, and one year after the foundation broke away from Oklahoma State University, NCAST is spending roughly $28 million to convert the structure into what its chief executive calls a national addiction research center.

The foundation holds nearly $180 million of the settlement money, which the agreement dedicated to "addiction studies, treatment and education," Public Radio Tulsa reported this week. Chief executive Don Kyle, a former Purdue Pharma researcher who has run the organization for almost five years, gave the station a tour of the unfinished building and answered questions about the money — one of the few interviews he has granted since taking the job.

A settlement that bypassed the national case

Oklahoma was the only state to settle its opioid claims against Purdue before the manufacturer filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The $270 million agreement ended a lawsuit arguing that the company and other drugmakers bore responsibility for thousands of overdose deaths in the state and for the health care, law enforcement and treatment costs of its addiction crisis. A portion of the money was set aside for an independent foundation rather than routed entirely through the Legislature.

Since then the national settlement with distributors and manufacturers has sent billions of dollars to states and counties, most of it governed by abatement rules that require spending on opioid use disorder prevention and treatment. Oklahoma's Purdue arrangement predates those rules, and its terms left the foundation with unusual latitude over how the money is used.

Sixteen labs, built off-site and trucked in

The laboratories account for about $10.5 million of the renovation. They are being manufactured off-site by Art's-Way Scientific, an Iowa company that will deliver 16 pre-built modular labs to the Tulsa site in early 2027, according to Kyle. The company advertises delivery within 60 days of an order and buildings with a roughly 50-year lifespan, and its website lists modular laboratory work for the National Institutes of Health's cancer research center in Maryland and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The Tulsa complex will also include a vivarium for animal research.

Kyle said the modular approach is what makes the schedule realistic. "That turns out to be a really strategic thing for us because we don't want to sit around waiting for years to finish this construction," he told Public Radio Tulsa. "Because of the time acceleration and the lower cost, these modular laboratories are quite the thing, and so it's a perfect match for us."

He expects the building to be finished next year. NCAST has 17 employees and, while the labs are under construction, has been working through an agreement that gives it access to laboratory space at the University of Arizona and through contract labs.

The break with Oklahoma State

The foundation lost its previous headquarters when it separated from the OSU Center for Health Sciences in September 2025, a split Attorney General Gentner Drummond mediated after disagreements over how the settlement money should be used. Under the terms, OSU-CHS received $20 million and some laboratory equipment, while NCAST kept the $180 million fund. The university is also working with lawyers to transfer about 20,000 experimental molecules and biosamples on pain management and addiction that came from a separate 2019 Purdue agreement.

Drummond framed the division as a sorting of missions. OSU-CHS, he said in announcing the separation, "will maintain its focus on direct clinical treatment, patient care and training the next generation of healthcare professionals," while NCAST would pursue "research into non-addictive pain management drugs, more effective overdose reversal drugs, and human clinical trials aimed at validating new and improved treatments."

While it was attached to the university, NCAST sponsored the research of three doctoral students, funded the OSU Addiction Recovery Clinic in Tulsa and set up research collaborations between its employees and university faculty, Kyle said.

"We don't have any secrets"

Kyle has been a low-profile figure for an organization holding a nine-figure public settlement, and he told the station that the silence was partly a branding problem. "When we were at OSU, everything we did was co-branded with OSU. So anything that we did was sort of a star on the OSU column, and that's fine, but it doesn't help us with our emerging national reputation," he said. "For all of those kinds of reasons, we've been a little more invisible than we would have liked to have been."

Asked about the fund itself, he was direct: "We don't have any secrets. We're not trying to make money off of things. We don't have any shady deals with anybody, anywhere. I'm showing you our building in the most raw form because I want you to see that we have a home, and we're going to fix it up."

Public Radio Tulsa reported that Kyle has accepted few interview requests in his nearly five years running the foundation, despite speculation about how it has used the money. His tour this week was an exception, and the station's account is the most detailed public description to date of what the settlement money has built.

What the labs are meant to produce

The research agenda Kyle and Drummond describe is upstream of the treatment system: non-addictive pain medications, better overdose reversal drugs, and clinical trials of new therapies. That work sits alongside a much larger and better-funded national effort, including trials of medication-assisted treatment protocols that are already standard care.

The building's completion will be the clearest test of whether the arrangement delivers. Kyle invited the station back for the opening. "When we have our grand opening, I want you to come back, and I want you to tell people, 'They're doing exactly what he told me,'" he said.

For a state that signed its settlement in 2019, the first laboratory will not be operating until 2027 — a reminder of how long the distance is between a legal victory over a drugmaker and anything a patient can touch.