War on drugs enlists an antibody.

Hoping to combat cocaine overdoses or make it difficult for a rehabilitating addict to get high, scientists have enlisted the immune system to generate antibodies that bind cocaine and clear it from a person's system. One concern, however, is that a person could respond by simply taking more cocaine than the antibodies could mop up.

An antibody that chews up a cocaine molecule and comes back for more has now been proven to protect mice from becoming addicted to and overdosing on cocaine, Donald W. Landry of Columbia University and his colleagues say in the Aug. 18 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The drug-busting protein, known as a catalytic antibody, splits a molecule of cocaine into two harmless fragments without destroying itself (SN: 3/27/93, p. 199). In trials on volunteers, researchers have already started tests of cocaine antibodies that simply bind to the drug, as well as a vaccine that induces such antibodies, notes Frank Vocci of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md. "The [immune] approach is alive and well. It's laboring along, and we should have an answer in a year or two about how viable this approach is," he says.