Anti-cocaine vaccine that eats drug up 'like Pac-man' could be used on humans within a year

The vaccine uses the common cold to trigger an immune response to remove drug from a user's blood

But addicts will require regular booster shots to ensure that they cannot get high in the long-term



An anti-cocaine vaccine that ‘eats up cocaine like a Pac-man’ has come a step closer to being used in humans.



The new vaccine that could help treat cocaine addicts has just passed preliminary tests in primates and could be trialled on humans soon.

The vaccine works by preventing the active compound reaching the brain before it can produce the dopamine-induced high.

The new drug uses the immune system to remove the active chemicals in cocaine from the bloodstream. This prevents the drug reaching the brain and making a user high

‘The vaccine eats up the cocaine in the blood like a little Pac-man before it can reach the brain,’ said the study's lead author, Dr. Ronald Crystal, chairman of the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.

The study, published online by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, used a radiological technique to demonstrate that the anti-cocaine vaccine prevented the drug from reaching the brain.

Dr Crystal added: ‘We believe this strategy is a win-win for those individuals… who are committed to breaking their addiction to the drug.



'Even if a person who receives the anti-cocaine vaccine falls off the wagon, cocaine will have no effect.’

Dr. Crystal says he expects to begin human testing of the anti-cocaine vaccine within a year.

Cocaine, a tiny molecule drug, works to produce feelings of pleasure because it blocks the recycling of dopamine -- the ‘pleasure’ neurotransmitter -- in two areas of the brain, the putamen in the forebrain and the caudate nucleus in the brain's centre.



When dopamine accumulates at the nerve endings, ‘you get this massive flooding of dopamine and that is the feel good part of the cocaine high,’ said Dr. Crystal.

The new vaccine attaches cocaine molecules (pictured) to the common cold virus to trigger an immune response in the body

The new vaccine combines the common cold virus with a particle that mimics the structure of cocaine.



When the vaccine is injected into an animal, its immune system ‘sees’ the cold virus and mounts an response against both the virus and the cocaine impersonator that is hooked to it.



'The immune system learns to see cocaine as an intruder,' says Dr. Crystal.



'Once immune cells are educated to regard cocaine as the enemy, it produces antibodies, from that moment on, against cocaine the moment the drug enters the body.'

The research was initially carried out on mice, but the most recent was conducted on primates, which are more closely related to humans. Human trialled are hoped to begin soon.



The researchers do not know how often the vaccine will need to be administered in humans to maintain its anti-cocaine effect.



One vaccine lasted 13 weeks in mice and seven weeks in non-human primates.

'An anti-cocaine vaccination will require booster shots in humans, but we don't know yet how often these booster shots will be needed,' said Dr. Crystal.

