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Vaccines targeting drugs of abuse: is the glass half-empty or half-full?

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 12, pages 67–72 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

The advent of vaccines targeting drugs of abuse heralded a fundamentally different approach to treating substance-related disorders. In contrast to traditional pharmacotherapies for drug abuse, vaccines act by sequestering circulating drugs and terminating the drug-induced 'high' without inducing unwanted neuromodulatory effects. Drug-targeting vaccines have entered clinical evaluation, and although these vaccines show promise from a biomedical viewpoint, the ethical and socioeconomic implications of vaccinating patients against drugs of abuse merit discussion within the scientific community.

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Figure 1: Active and passive drug vaccines.
Figure 2: Incidence of drug use.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kim D. Janda and Jennifer B. Treweek are at the Departments of Chemistry and Immunology, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, BCC 582, La Jolla, California 92037-1000, USA.,

    Kim D. Janda & Jennifer B. Treweek

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Correspondence to Kim D. Janda.

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Janda, K., Treweek, J. Vaccines targeting drugs of abuse: is the glass half-empty or half-full?. Nat Rev Immunol 12, 67–72 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri3130

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