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Cocaine Vaccine In the Works

Posted by kdawson on from the runnin-round-my-brain dept.

martyros writes "Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine are performing clinical trials of a vaccine that teaches the immune system to attack cocaine, preventing it from giving a high. The vaccine is made by attaching inactivated cocaine molecules to the outside of inactivated cholera proteins. When the immune system attacks the cholera proteins, it also 'learns' the cocaine molecules as well. The result is that the immune system 'recognizes the potent naked drug when it's ingested. The antibodies bind to the cocaine and prevent it from reaching the brain, where it normally would generate the highs that are so addictive.'" An earlier story from The Star notes that human trials for vaccines against both cocaine and nicotine are well under way.

6 of 724 comments (clear)

  1. Possibly useful, but... by unchiujar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Would you vaccinate your child ?

    --
    Shakespeare poems - infinite monkeys with infinite time.Computer tech support - a few trained ones working from 9 to 5.
  2. Great, so now they'll just be snorting Adderall! by stevejsmith · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oh, great. Cocaine prohibition produced crack cocaine and meth, crackdowns on ingredients to make ecstacy produced PMA, heroin prohibition produces all sorts of gross things, etc., etc. Cocaine is actually one of the safer stimulants out there (compared to its main rivals, crack and meth, which emerged due to cocaine's astronomical price thanks to prohibition). This insane drug whack-a-mole game is producing even more deadly and impure drugs. While we could be ingesting small and known quantities of pure marijuana, MDMA, cocaine, opiates, shrooms, and LSD, we're instead ingesting unknown quantities of who-knows-what. Most drug deaths are caused by adulterants, not the pure drug itself.

  3. Re:Analogs by pilgrim23 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is it cocaine specific or does it effect response to a whole class of alkaloids? I would truely hate to be in the dentist chair with drill ready only to find, rather quickly, how well this vacine potentially could work.

    --
    - Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
  4. The nicotine vaccine is the hard one by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The anti-smoking vaccine, NicVax, is in phase 2B clinical testing, and appears to work. Sort of: "High antibody responders (top 30%) continued to show statistically significant abstinence at nine months: 9-Month continuous abstinence rate: NicVAX=20% (12/61, p=0.0076) vs. Placebo=6% (6/100)" That's not impressive, yet it's better than most anti-smoking programs.

    Nicotine addiction is the toughest one to break. Programs for getting people off cocaine are about 40% successful. Programs for getting people off smoking are about 10-20% successful. Also, addicts tend to "age out" of cocaine and heroin addiction; after age 40, most of them eventually give it up. Not nicotine; people smoke their way to the grave.

    One problem with a vaccine approach is that encourage overdoses, to overcome the antibodies. For nicotine, this is less of a problem, because smoking has a limited intake rate. But for cocaine, it's a real issue.

    It's encouraging, though, that no side effects of this vaccine have been detected so far vs. the placebo.

    The real promise for this vaccine is as a preventative measure. The average age for a new smoker is 13. Only 10% start after age 18. So if this works, a school inoculation program might be the way to prevent smoking.

  5. LD50 by HPNpilot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If I understand this correctly, this will prevent cocaine users from getting high. But how does it affect the LD50 (dosage sufficient to kill 50% of the population)?

    A cocaine user decides to get high after being "immunized." He snorts a few lines. Huh. Nothing. So he snorts more and more... at some point I am willing to wager he will suffer cardiac arrest or some other life-threatening problem on his quest towards getting high. If the LD50 is not much changed, this may occur pretty easily.

    Also, cocaine has a very rapid onset. I am thinking it wouldn't take much to overwhelm the slower immune system response.

    This is an interesting experiment as it is always worthwhile to better understand the immune system, but I think this would be a Real Bad Idea to actually implement. Unless the objective is to kill all cocaine users.

  6. Re:Analogs by jhobbs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to the Justice Dept., of the 1.5 million inmates in the U.S.:

            * Drug Offenses 59.6%
            * Robbery 9.8%
            * Property Offenses 5.5%
            * Extortion, Fraud, Bribery 6.8%
            * Violent Offenses 2.7%
            * Firearms, Explosives, Arson 8.6%
            * White Collar 1.0%
            * Immigration 2.8%
            * Courts or Corrections 0.8%
            * National Security 0.1%
            * Continuing Criminal Enterprise 0.8%
            * Miscellaneous 1.5%