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posted by takyon on Wednesday June 28 2017, @04:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the permanent-fix dept.

Dr. Lowe, from In The Pipeline, writes about the development of a vaccine for heroin:

At first thought, that might seem like a weird idea. Drugs of abuse, such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine et al. are small molecules, and as such are too small to set off immune responses on their own. But a strategy could be to attach them to some larger protein that can raise antibodies – if those antibodies recognize the drug-labeled part of the protein conjugate, they may well retain activity against the drug molecule in its free state.

[...] It's been a long road. The first morphine immunoconjugate was described in 1970, and a morphine vaccine was tested in rabbits in 1975. But very little progress in the field occurred over the next twenty years or so, partly because methadone treatment for heroin addiction had become widely used. It's interesting to note, though, that vaccine development work against amphetamine seems to have followed a roughly similar path

[...] It would seem that we really are getting close to human clinical trials for some of these, which will be quite interesting. A drug-abuse vaccine is not going to be magic, though. Because of the specificity of the immune response, someone who's been vaccinated against heroin would almost certainly still respond to morphine, and most definitely would to compounds like fentanyl or oxycodone [...] But vaccines could, at the same time, provide the extra help needed for people to finally break free of a particular drug, and addicts who are really trying to quit need all the help that they can get.

I'd say that last part is the key. One of the big issues in drug addiction is (in the end) a philosophical argument about free will (which would explain why it never gets resolved!) Is drug addiction a disease, a choice, a behavior, a biochemical problem. . .the arguments go on forever, complicated by the way that different people attach different meanings to those terms.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/06/26/a-heroin-vaccine
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.7b03334


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @04:59PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @04:59PM (#532523)

    someone who's been vaccinated against heroin would almost certainly still respond to morphine, and most definitely would to compounds like fentanyl or oxycodone

    Suppose we had a vaccine which makes our immune system annihilate heroin upon entry. Effect could be, with mass vaccination of the vulnerable social groups and children, eradication of heroin abuse, and hence production of it.
    Don't you think that illegal industry wouldn't just employ chemists to invent another opioid derivative of opium, and then continue business as usual?

    I am not any kind of expert in medicine, psychiatry, pharmacology, or helping, so take the following for random ramblings:

    Treatment of drug addiction needs to check two crucial key points: withdrawal effects and dopamine deficiency, and euphoric effects of the drug. Perhaps drug addiction is just a very hard, chemically induced, case of bipolar disorder. Perhaps it could be as well treated as one.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:02PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:02PM (#532545) Journal

    Don't you think that illegal industry wouldn't just employ chemists to invent another opioid derivative of opium, and then continue business as usual?

    Yes, according to the summary:

    Because of the specificity of the immune response, someone who's been vaccinated against heroin would almost certainly still respond to morphine, and most definitely would to compounds like fentanyl or oxycodone

    This is just speculation, but maybe a "vaccine" could be made for an entire class of drugs, such as opioids. In which case substituting one molecule for a very similar one wouldn't cut it. Since the person addicted to heroin wants the effects of heroin, maybe they would not seek out something dissimilar, like barbiturates or ketamine or whatever.

    Even more speculation: how about "molecular cages" that float around in your body, and release Narcan when opioids are present.

    I didn't know this bit of info [wikipedia.org]:

    Opiate is a term classically used in pharmacology to mean a drug derived from opium. Opioid, a more modern term, is used to designate all substances, both natural and synthetic, that bind to opioid receptors (including antagonists).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:08PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:08PM (#532548)

    Prevention.

    The vaccine would induce antibody production, which would prevent heroin from being processed into its active form; thereby, increasing the threshold level of heroin required to reach a "high". The antibodies may or may not have sustained production without further "boosting".

    This is not meant to treat addiction, but it could be used to prevent relapse.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:24PM (3 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:24PM (#532558)

      I haven't found the answer to my question: does it prevent withdrawal symptoms?
      From the description, it doesn't look like it. So the addicts will just go looking for another high which still works. Recent market offerings (listed as not affected by the "vaccine") are more dangerous.

      I'm failing to see the positive side.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:50PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:50PM (#532574)

        No, it would only prevent heroin from being converted into its active form.

        The vaccine could be used to help willing patients break their addition. This specific vaccine is not meant to be a perfect solution for drug abuse, so it failing to meet that standard would not mean that there are no positive sides to its use.

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:58PM (1 child)

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:58PM (#532577)

          Genuine question: What's the worst part of breaking the addiction? Wanting the highs, or living with the withdrawal?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @07:18PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @07:18PM (#532582)

            Withdrawal is usually temporary, while the desire to get high and the addiction to the drug lasts much longer. People can get past withdrawal, but many often fail to remain "clean" despite wanting to break the addiction.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:21PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:21PM (#532613)

      Yeah but it sounds like the person would just try to take much more, leading to overdose. Not saying that's not a good outcome, for us, but probably shitty outcome for the druggie.

      >In before "He wuz a gud boi"

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:36PM (#532623)

        the person would just try to take much more, leading to overdose

        Possibly.
        It would depend on how much the threshold is increased. If the person has to increase the dose 10-fold, then they may not have a reasonable opportunity to get access to that much heroin.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:06AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 29 2017, @12:06AM (#532702)

    Sounds like a big business opportunity... hence: probable.

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