New vaccine pushes immune system to attack nicotine

According to the World Health Organization, tobacco consumption is the leading cause of preventable death across the globe by killing almost six million and causing more than half a trillion dollars of economic damage each year. It also killed nearly 100 million people in the last century and if current trends continue, it will kill about one billion more in the 21st century. These shocking figures along with health warnings make tobacco addicts try to quit smoking, though in most cases they cannot resist the cravings. Some scientists have recently announced that they have found an effective way to fight the nicotine craze.

A group of researchers from the Scripps Institute in California say they have managed to design a vaccine that could make the immune system destroy the molecules of nicotine, the addictive agent of tobacco, before they reach the brain.

The new vaccine is aimed at altering the nicotine molecules so that the antibodies of the immune system could target them, attach to them and delay their effects.

“A major hurdle in the development of the strategy has been to elicit a sufficiently high antibody concentration to curb nicotine distribution to the brain,” researchers noted.

The newly designed vaccine, which has been tested on a group of mice, revealed that it delayed the effects of the addictive agent within the first 10 minutes after injection. The research also showed that the treated mice had lower concentrations of nicotine in their brain.

The findings of the research were published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

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