Burkhard, an associate professor of molecular and cell biology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has just received a five-year, $2.5 million Avant-Garde Medications Development Award from the National Institutes Drug Abuse, a part of the National Institutes of Health, to develop and test a new vaccine for nicotine.
When you smoke, nicotine travels from your lungs to your blood, and finally to your brain, where it acts as a stimulant and produces a good feeling, or a “kick,” as Burkhard says. This is what makes it so addictive.
But if the immune system could be trained to recognize and bind nicotine molecules in the blood, before they reach the brain, then the addiction loop would be short-circuited, and people could more easily quit smoking, he says.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-1...-nicotine.html
When you smoke, nicotine travels from your lungs to your blood, and finally to your brain, where it acts as a stimulant and produces a good feeling, or a “kick,” as Burkhard says. This is what makes it so addictive.
But if the immune system could be trained to recognize and bind nicotine molecules in the blood, before they reach the brain, then the addiction loop would be short-circuited, and people could more easily quit smoking, he says.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-1...-nicotine.html
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