New approach to terminate cocaine addictive buzz tested

A team of researchers has shed light on how to terminate cocaine's addictive buzz.

The researchers took a safe bacterial protein called flagellin that has already been incorporated in other vaccines and modified it to boost the immune response to cocaine.

They tested the compound in mice and found that it worked better than a vaccine candidate they'd developed previously.

The strategy, the researchers conclude, opens up a new avenue for designing vaccines against drugs of abuse.

The study is published in ACS journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.