Addicted to cocaine? This new gene therapy may help you overcome

This new method can help you overcome cocaine addiction and prevent deaths due to overdose of cocaine, thanks to the scientists who have used gene therapy via skin.

Written By: Sreemoyee Chatterjee | Published : September 18, 2018 9:42 PM IST

Now a gene therapy via skin can help you come out of cocaine addiction, thanks to a group of scientists that has come up with this novel method. This skin cell-based therapy can restrain your desire for cocaine and prevent you from an overdose. The study has been successfully trialled on mice and it involved removal of a small patch of skin and introducing genes that generate cocaine-degrading enzymes. The skin patch is grafted on to the patient. The study has been published in the journal, Nature Biomedical Engineering.

"Our results show promise of cutaneous gene therapy as a safe and cost-effective therapeutic option for cocaine abuse in the future," reportedly said Ming Xu, research lead and professor at the University of Chicago. The aim of the research is to curb drug-seeking among cocaine addicts or those who are at a greater risk of cocaine abuse and protect them from an overdose by making them immune to further cocaine abuse, highlighted a recent media report. According to the researchers, this method can also be used to check and treat alcohol, nicotine and opioid abuse.

The study involved collection of primary epidermal basal progenitor or stem cells from new born mice. The researchers used CRISPR to deliver engineered human butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) - enzymes that can degrade cocaine - to the cells, stated the media report. This was followed by the team preparing skin organoids and transplanting them back to the donor animals. These grafted skin cells acted as potent agents of expressing and secreting hBChE into the bloodstream that effectively protected mice from cocaine-seeking and cocaine-induced relapse. Not just that, it also prevented death of mice exposed to uniformly lethal cocaine doses.