A therapeutic cocaine vaccine designed to suppress the high addicts get from taking cocaine is safe and produced cocaine antibodies in humans, a Yale study finds. Thomas Kosten, M.D., principal investigator on the phase 1 study, and his team administered the vaccine to 34 former cocaine abusers living in a residential treatment facility. This neutralizes its psychoactive effect.
More advanced trials are already underway.
TA-CD offers the potential for a completely new and highly viable approach to a very serious problem for which there are no alternative therapies available. Such a product, Kosten said, would be complementary to behavioral therapy in overcoming cocaine addiction. This vaccine would target the more than two million regular cocaine users in the United States alone. In the Phase 1 trial, the vaccine was given to 34 subjects split into three cohorts to evaluate three different doses of the vaccine following 30 days of abstinence. Two subjects in each cohort received a placebo and the rest received active vaccine.