Abstract
Cocaine is one of the most potent and addictive psychostimulants known and there are no available pharmacotherapies to treat cocaine addiction. Here we describe a novel cocaine vaccine employing the mucosal adjuvant and mast cell-activating oligopeptide, mastoparan-7 (M7), to achieve optimal IgA antibody responses in mucosal secretions and effective induction of humoral immunity using a short immunization protocol. This formulation, using a hapten-carrier system to deliver cocaine as antigen, also reduced cocaine penetration of the blood brain barrier and protected mice from its psychoactive effects by reducing cocaine-induced locomotion. Surprisingly, the magnitude of cocaine-specific antibody titers induced by each adjuvant was not the major determinant of functional protection from cocaine challenge. A side-by-side comparison of the two haptens, cocaine and its analog GNC demonstrated that cocaine haptenation resulted in superior functional protection when used in combination with the novel mucosal adjuvant, M7. These results provide a new potential strategy for combatting cocaine addiction through mucosal vaccination.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 12 |
Journal | npj Vaccines |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2020 Dec 1 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Drs. David Moody and David Andrenyak for quantifying cocaine and metabolites in mouse tissues, which was funded by a contract from NIDA (N01DA-14-7788). This work was funded by National Institutes of Health grant #1R21DA029731-01.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Immunology
- Pharmacology
- Infectious Diseases
- Pharmacology (medical)