Vaccine against smoking
16 May 2005
by Richard Conan-Davies
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A swiss company has developed a vaccine against smoking. This sounds a little odd at first but basically what the company has done is create a combination of a virus linked to a nicotine molecule that forces the body's immune system to produce anti bodies against nicotine. The vaccination calledCYT002-NicQb has been shown to produce high levels of nicotine-specific antibodies that bind nicotine in the blood. The anti-body attaches to the nicotine firmly and is too large to pass the blood-brain-barrier which stops nicotine from entering the brain. Prof. Dr. Jacques Cornuz who led the research represented 3 Swiss research organisation and a company called Cytos Biotechnology AG said, "I am very excited about the outcome of this study, as the data clearly suggest that antibodies against nicotine are effective in helping people quit smoking. There is certainly no doubt that new approaches such as vaccination are urgently needed. Despite the fact that smoking causes 30% of all cancer deaths, including 87% of deaths from lung cancer, there are 1.3 billion smokers worldwide. And each smoker looses on average more than 10 years of lifetime as a result from this serious addiction. I believe that the vaccine approach has the potential to dramatically alter the way how we will treat smoking addiction in the future." |
 IgE is the immune response produced against nicotine in this new vaccine |
Related Links
Original press release from Cyto Biotechnology
Nature & Science News
ClearlyExplained.com