Genetically Modified Virus Implanted Into The Liver Helps With Cocaine Addiction
Virus created by genetic engineers makes the cocaine dissolve quickly. Thus, the stimulatory effect of the drugs cannot manifest making it easier for the addicts to quit.
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Cocaine On Money & In Water
There are more and more people who are addicted to cocaine. If back in 2014 the National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated the number of addicts to roughly one million and just three years alter they increased their estimate to more than a double. Even chemical analysis of banknotes shows how popular the drug is as the majority of the checked banknotes are been positive. It doesn't matter whether chemists looked at Euros, the Polish Zloty or dollars.
In another study, the chemists analyzed water in water treatment plants in over fifty cities in eighteen different countries and the results clearly show that cocaine is just flowing there during the weekends. But the number one of cocaine cities turned out to be Antwerp.
Quick Cocaine Disposer
Scientists from the Mayo Clinic in the USA have been working for some time on developing a treatment for cocaine addiction using gene therapy. And twenty years ago they managed to get an enzyme that quickly dissolves cocaine into useless substances. If the enzyme was in people's blood it would dissolve the drug so quickly it wouldn't get a chance to be effective. And buying an expensive drug without getting high would be no fun for any addict.
The enzyme was created by modifying the enzyme known as Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) that is commonly found in the human body and apart from other things it catalyzes the slow dissolving of cocaine. With a small modification of genes, the managed to increase the speed of dissolving cocaine by BChE two-thousand times.
The modified enzyme CocH was tested in the organisms of lab animals. Injecting CocH straight into the veins quickly dissolves the cocaine and eliminates its effects as the tests on lab rats clearly shown. But such a treatment would not only be quite hard as the addict would need daily enzyme injections but it would also be very expensive as making the enzyme is not cheap.
Gene Treatment
The solution may come in gene therapy. In such a case you insert a gene into the patient that will produce a protein molecule and the body can then make the protein itself. This allows you to not only treat hereditary diseases but newly even some cancers. And a new study shows how it can be used even to treat cocaine addiction.
Genetic engineers implanted the gene for the CocH enzyme into a virus that was also modified so it cannot reproduce in cells. The only thing it can do is implant the gene itself in the cells. Then the cells are capable of making the enzyme themselves. So far the gene therapy was tested on lab rats.
The rats that had the gene inserted were perfectly healthy. When the scientists gave cocaine to rats that didn't go through the gene therapy the rats they were very excited and their liver wasn't being damaged. But the same amount of cocaine in mice who went through gene therapy didn't get excited and their liver was fine.
The results were so good that they convinced the FDA to allow scientists to do the first phase of clinical tests on patients that are addicted to cocaine.
Sources:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4720324/
- https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/hum.2019.233
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