An opioid vaccine?

 

Opioid overdoses accounted for the majority of drug deaths in 2020. Cutting-edge research into opioid vaccines aims to address the dire situation.Max Butterworth / NBC News; Getty Images

From NBC News

The vaccination felt like most others — a slight pinprick in M.'s  upper arm, followed by the application of a Band-Aid and advice to monitor the injection site for any unusual reactions.

The vaccine, however, is unlike any other. It's not meant to protect against the coronavirus, or any germ, for that matter. 

It is meant to protect against a deadly opioid overdose.

When M. (who requested that her full name not be used to protect her identity) got the shot this Tuesday, she became just the sixth person to receive it.

"It's very powerful now that I think about it," she said of participating in the trial, just a few hours after getting the vaccine. 

The trial — the first to test the safety and potential effectiveness of an opioid vaccine in humans — is being led by Sandra Comer, a professor of neurobiology in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Marco Pravetoni, of the University of Minnesota Medical School. 

All of the participants, including M., are in active phases of addiction and are being housed at Columbia or another clinic for 10 weeks during the study. That's because researchers must give the participants nonlethal doses of opioids, including heroin, after the experimental vaccine to see how it works.

"The principle is pretty simple," Pravetoni said. It "triggers the patient's own immune system to develop antibodies against the target."

It's the same basic idea behind all vaccines: teach the immune system to make antibodies that will target and destroy a specific invader. Covid-19 vaccines, for example, work by training a person's immune system to identify and make antibodies that target the coronavirus’s infamous spike protein.

In the Columbia trial, the vaccine is targeting a specific type of narcotic: oxycodone, an opioid used in painkillers like OxyContin.

The vaccine would not prevent cravings for the drug — it would likely be used in conjunction with medications that do — but it could serve as an added layer of protection for people at high risk, Comer said. If they end up using oxycodone, the antibodies should bind to it and prevent it from getting to the brain.

That is key in reducing overdose deaths. Opioids kill by entering the brain, triggering a person's body to slow breathing down to dangerous levels.

Drug overdoses killed a record 93,331 people in the U.S. last year alone. Opioids accounted for about 70 percent of such deaths. 

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