A new vaccine developed by US company Nabi Biopharmaceuticals may help bring an end to cigarette addiction.

Tobacco addiction affects approximately 1.3 billion people worldwide. The vaccine NicVax, which will be released towards the end of 2010, reportedly promotes the production of antibodies that attach themselves to nicotine particles within the body. Once this happens, the particles become too large to pass into the brain, which inhibits the release of dopamine, the neurohormone associated with feeling pleasure.
So far, trials have been carried out on people who smoke an average of 24 cigarettes each day and show a 50 per cent success rate. This is twice the success rate found with prescription medications such as Champix.
"Nicotine patches and other medications replace nicotine with other substances," said Jimmy Stehberg, a neurobiologist at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile. "But this does not reduce the sensation of pleasure one gets from smoking… the (new) vaccine stops the nicotine from entering the brain, which reduces its addictive qualities." (pi)