Vaccine May Block the Effect of Nicotine
- By BSTQ Staff
Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., have developed a vaccine that may one day protect people against the addictive effects of nicotine.
In the study, mice were injected with a viral shell that contained instructions for making the nicotine antibody. The viral shell also contained instructions to harmlessly infect the liver cells of the mice, thus essentially using the liver as a factory to continuously churn out antibodies that attach to nicotine once it hits the bloodstream. Weeks later, they found antibodies against nicotine in the blood of the treated mice. They then injected the mice with nicotine — about the amount in two cigarettes — and found the antibodies in their blood would bind to the nicotine and prevent it from getting to the brain.
The mice treated with the experimental vaccine had more nicotine in their blood than mice treated with a placebo vaccine, and nearly all of it (83 percent) had been captured by an antibody. The mice injected with the active vaccine also had far less nicotine in their brains compared to the placebo-treated mice. Finally, researchers found that vaccinated mice didn’t appear to experience any of the physical effects of nicotine.
Michael Fingerhood, MD, medical director of the comprehensive care practice at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, Md., who specializes in the treatment of addiction, called the vaccine a promising approach that warranted more research. The study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
