About 2 milligrams of fentanyl, a tenth of the weight of a grain of rice, is likely to kill an adult, depending on size. The University of Houston says that more than 150 people in the United States die every day from overdoses of synthetic opioids, and it has a vaccine it hopes will blunt that toll.
Colin Haile, a research associate professor of psychology and a founding member of the university’s Drug Discovery Institute, developed it. The idea is simple to state. The shot trains the body to make antibodies that bind fentanyl in the blood and keep it out of the brain. The drug is then cleared through the kidneys.
“It’s similar to the hepatitis B vaccine,” Haile told Fox News in 2023. “If an individual consumes fentanyl, those antibodies will bind to the drug and prevent it from getting into the brain.” Without it, he said, fentanyl reaches the brain’s reward centers and the parts that control breathing, which is how overdoses kill.
From mice to people
The Houston team worked on the vaccine for nearly six years before that interview, building it from two protein components already used in other vaccines. Haile said tests in mice and rats showed the vaccine kept fentanyl out of the brain. “The effect of the vaccine was quite dramatic,” he said.
The Department of Defense paid for the development. Officials told Fox News the project won backing because addiction was reaching military families.
The vaccine has since been licensed to ARMR Sciences, a company Haile co-founded and advises. Its first human trial is now under way at the Center for Human Drug Research, which is affiliated with the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
Haile has said it could protect more than patients. He has pointed to the military, where fentanyl could be used as a chemical threat, and to first responders and police who come across unknown substances.
Who it is for
The limits are clear in his own account. The shot is meant for people who have already detoxed and want to stay off opioids, and it prevents relapse. “This vaccine is for individuals that want to quit,” Haile said. “It is not for individuals that do not want to quit.” Someone vaccinated against fentanyl could still take other opioids that the antibodies do not target.
Wilson Compton, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which consults with Haile’s team, described to Fox News how fentanyl came to dominate the illicit supply: it is cheaper and easier to smuggle than heroin, and it produces the same effects in the brain. Federal estimates cited by Fox put overdose deaths above 110,000 in the 12 months to August 2022.
Haile said that if the fentanyl vaccine clears trials, it could speed approval of vaccines for cocaine and methamphetamine now in development. “If we can tackle the primary ones, fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamine, we will be saving hundreds of thousands of lives,” he said. Consult your doctor for medical advice.
Sources
- UH Drug Discovery Institute
- Fentanyl vaccine poised to be 'game changer' in fight against addiction
- Battling it Out
