Monday, November 16, 2009

An Anti- Smoking Vaccine?

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has signed a potential $500M licensing deal with Nabi Biopharmaceuticals for Nabi's new anti-smoking vaccine NicVAX.
NicVAX is an experimental therapy for the treatment of nicotine addiction and the prevention of smoking relapse. The vaccine is designed to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to the nicotine molecules. Once bound together, they are too large to cross the blood-brain barrier. In this way, the nicotine is blocked from reaching the receptors in the brain that cause the highly-addictive pleasure sensation experienced by smokers and users of nicotine products.

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