Local physician Dr Thomas Kosten of the Baylor College of Medicine, and Houston’s Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, has long been battling drug usage through research into possible vaccines that could treat the physiological process of addiction. But last week his work garnered a major grant award from the National Institute of Drug Abuse under the title Avant-Garde Award for Innovative Medication Development Research.
The grant will provide $500,000 for five years to help Dr Kosten and his team further their work in to a possible methamphetamine vaccine that is currently in promising animal trials. This vaccine, and similar ones that have been in tested and approved on other drugs already, seek to target a drug’s toxins in such a way as to make them readily identifiable to anti-bodies that can then attack them as invaders. Thus the body itself can help break the drug-brain connection necessary to cause addiction.
For more on how the process works see the infographic below. (click to enlarge)
Dr Kosten’s goes into additional detail on his research, and his other contributions to the battle against drug abuse, in the lecture video below filmed at the Baker Institute (47-minutes)