Rx will fix coke addicts

Vaccine eases urge

City medical researchers have developed a potentially revolutionary vaccine that could help cocaine addicts kick the habit, The Post has learned.

The vaccine, developed at NewYork-Presbyterian/ Weill Cornell Medical Center, has been approved for clinical trials after earlier experiments on monkeys and rodents showed the drug kept cocaine that had entered the bloodstream from reaching the brain.

“While there are drugs like methadone designed to treat heroin, there aren’t any therapeutics available to treat cocaine addiction. We hope that our vaccine will change that,” said chief investigator Dr. Ronald Crystal, a pulmonologist and chair of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell.

“Most people who become cocaine addicts want to give it up but struggle to kick the habit in the long term,” Crystal said. “If this vaccine works, it could represent a lifetime therapeutic for addicts.”

The vaccine would work as a blocker, preventing the drug’s passage to the brain and nervous system and thus curbing its dopamineinduced high. This should help take away the craving for it, according to experts.

Cocaine is a small molecule, Crystal explained; the immune system doesn’t release antibodies to attack it because it moves through the bloodstream undetected.

The new dAdGNE vaccine would activate the immune system to unleash antibodies to “gobble up cocaine like Pac-Man” while in the bloodstream, Crystal added.

“The goal of this vaccine is to protect cocaine from entering the brain,” Crystal said. “Now we need to find out if the vaccine will cause enough anti-cocaine antibodies to be produced so that it works in humans, too.”

Weill Cornell got the green light from the federal government to offer the trial to humans partly because the vaccine caused no damage to internal organs of primates in earlier experiments.

Weill Cornell plans to enroll 30 cocaine addicts in a three-year clinical study funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and National Institutes of Health. Participants will be compensated $25 per visit and up to $2,400 if they complete the entire study.

Those interested in enrolling in the study can contact Aileen Orphilla at (646) 962-2672.