"It's a perspective that is very different from what we've operated on in the past," Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse told reporters this week at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.

Volkow said the agency intends to piggyback on the frenetic investment by drug companies in vaccine development, spurred by the need for new products and the runaway success of products like Merck's Gardasil vaccine to prevent the virus that causes cervical cancer.

"There is an enormous amount of research and development in vaccines for cancers and a wide variety of disorders," she said. "We can take advantage of those developments."

Volkow said the same methods for making a nicotine vaccine could be used for other illicit substances. Her agency backed a study released this month of an anti-cocaine vaccine that helped block the high felt by 38 percent of addicts who took it.

Source:http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/

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