Lifestyle vaccines.

CYTOS Biotechnology AG; VACCINATION; CIGARETTE smokers; SMOKING; TOBACCO use; NICOTINE; CORNUZ, Jacques; CIGARETTES; CLINICAL trials; TOBACCO; CLINICAL medicine; MEDICAL experimentation on humans; IMMUNOGLOBULINS; LUNG diseases; PREVENTIVE medicine; HIGH technology

The article reports that Cytos Biotechnology, in Zurich, Switzerland, has, as it announced to the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting held last week, made progress in developing a vaccine against nicotine. The idea of a nicotine vaccine is to stop the drug getting to the brain in the first place. People who are vaccinated should develop antibodies that bind to the nicotine in their bloodstreams, disabling it. If no nicotine reaches the brain, there will be no pleasurable reward for having a cigarette. Jacques Cornuz of the University Hospital in Lausanne, who actually conducted the trial for Cytos, enrolled a group of long-term smokers into a trial. Cornuz and his colleagues found that 40 percent of those in the vaccinated group had successfully abstained from smoking from the eighth week of the trial onwards, compared with 31percent in the placebo group. That was a statistically significant improvement on the placebo, and implied that the vaccine does indeed help some people stop smoking.