Cocaine-Vaccine Study: Hope for Addiction Treatment - TIME

Image via WikipediaCocaine-Vaccine Study: Hope for Addiction Treatment - TIME

Researchers announced this week the early trial results of a new vaccine to fight cocaine addiction — a compound that, by vaccine standards, was only mildly effective but served as an important proof of concept that vaccination against addiction could work.

"Vaccines are one of our top priorities," says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which helped fund the study and will finance a larger study of the cocaine vaccine next year. In September, NIDA also granted $10 million for a clinical trial to the makers of NicVAX, a nicotine vaccine that works similarly to the cocaine vaccine — by stimulating the immune system to create antibodies that bind to drug molecules and prevent them from entering the brain. (Because people don't generally make natural antibodies to cocaine, the cocaine vaccine combines a cocaine molecule with an inactive cholera toxin; incidentally, the vaccine protects against cholera as well).

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1928990,00.html#ixzz1AAgqCyj4

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