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Heroin Vaccine?
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Interesting... Permanent nalaxone? Would like to see the mechanism of the "vaccine"... I wonder if it's heroine specific :unsure:
This is really, really interesting. I found a decent review, but it requires institutional access.
The idea is that the immune system becomes sensitised to heroin, so that antibodies are produced, and bind any heroin consumed, preventing it from interacting with it's receptors and ultimately resulting in its degradation.
One of the major hurdles, is that you can't sensitise to the body's endogenous opiates, e.g. enkephalins, endorphins, because this would probably cause a bad neurologic syndrome.
Another, is that it can't just reduce the potency of the heroin, so that higher doses overcome it. I mean, this might still be useful, but it's not going to outright fix the problem.
And it needs to confer "immunity" for a long time period off as short and uncomplicated a dosing regimen as possible.
Then it needs to also target psychoactive metabolites of heroin, e.g. monoacetylmorphine, morphine, and morphine-6-glucuronide, otherwise a certain percentage of the heroin will still get metabolised into stuff that can give a high.
But, you probably want it not to act against all opiates, so that you can still have some therapeutic measures left. Although this point is debatable, as the benefits to the addict might outweight this potential negative. A broader range activity against more opiods / opiates might prevent the heroin user from becoming a dilaudid or percocet user.
Interesting stuff. I'll take a look for more stuff, some time when I'm less busy.
Stowe GN, Vendruscolo LF, Edwards S, Schlosburg JE, Misra KK, Schulteis G, Mayorov AV, Zakhari JS, Koob GF, Janda KD. A vaccine strategy that induces protective immunity against heroin. J Med Chem. 2011 Jul 28;54(14):5195-204. Epub 2011 Jun 30.
The idea is that the immune system becomes sensitised to heroin, so that antibodies are produced, and bind any heroin consumed, preventing it from interacting with it's receptors and ultimately resulting in its degradation.
One of the major hurdles, is that you can't sensitise to the body's endogenous opiates, e.g. enkephalins, endorphins, because this would probably cause a bad neurologic syndrome.
Another, is that it can't just reduce the potency of the heroin, so that higher doses overcome it. I mean, this might still be useful, but it's not going to outright fix the problem.
And it needs to confer "immunity" for a long time period off as short and uncomplicated a dosing regimen as possible.
Then it needs to also target psychoactive metabolites of heroin, e.g. monoacetylmorphine, morphine, and morphine-6-glucuronide, otherwise a certain percentage of the heroin will still get metabolised into stuff that can give a high.
But, you probably want it not to act against all opiates, so that you can still have some therapeutic measures left. Although this point is debatable, as the benefits to the addict might outweight this potential negative. A broader range activity against more opiods / opiates might prevent the heroin user from becoming a dilaudid or percocet user.
Interesting stuff. I'll take a look for more stuff, some time when I'm less busy.
Stowe GN, Vendruscolo LF, Edwards S, Schlosburg JE, Misra KK, Schulteis G, Mayorov AV, Zakhari JS, Koob GF, Janda KD. A vaccine strategy that induces protective immunity against heroin. J Med Chem. 2011 Jul 28;54(14):5195-204. Epub 2011 Jun 30.
bstone
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Immune system programmed to see heroin as an antigen. Cool.
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But how specific? Will it see other opiods the same way?
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Jon said:
This is a very good question. Seems like it could radically limit pain management options.
Post it up.
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