[New prospects of nicotine dependence treatment--vaccines]

Smoking is considered to be one of the main threats to health in many societies around the world. Despite carrying out numerous large-scale campaigns promoting a healthy life-style and stimulant avoidance, nicotine dependence still concerns a huge group of people. What is more, almost half of the population is exposed to passive contact with tobacco smoke. At present, there is a whole range of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical means of fighting nicotine dependence. The dramatic development of medical sciences in recent years, especially of the fields connected with biotechnology, resulted in working out of a new method of nicotinism treatment--antinicotinic vaccines. The starting point for working out of such drugs was the mechanism of nicotine action on central nervous system. The idea behind the vaccine is to prevent nicotine from passing through the blood-brain barrier. Nicotine molecules, due to their size and lipophilic character, can easily enter the brain. The mechanism of the antinicotinic vaccine's action consists in producing specific antibodies, which combined with nicotine in the bloodstream are to create immune complexes big enough not to enter the brain. Currently, clinical trails of three vaccines are being carried out: TA-NIC (Xenova Group, UK), NicVAX (NABI Biopharmaceuticals, USA), CYT002-NicQb (Cytos Biotechnology, Switzerland). The results indicate that this form of treatment is interesting when it comes to its effectiveness and in the future may become a routine method of nicotine dependence treatment.