The treatment has been shown to work in mice, and the researchers hope to begin human trials next year.
Scientists at the University of Chicago have come up with an intriguing potential treatment to combat cocaine and alcohol addictions — a skin graft genetically altered to release molecules that curb the craving for those substances.has been shown to work in mice, and the researchers hope to begin human trials next year. If it proves itself there, it would be a valuable addition to a growing but still inadequate arsenal of addiction treatments, observers said.
University of Chicago researcher Xiaoyang Wu shows items in the tissue culture lab at the U. of C. Gordon Center for Integrative Science on March 3, 2022. , involved giving the animals the option of drinking plain water or water adulterated with alcohol or cocaine, then taking the drugged water away. The skin graft that produces the cocaine-blocking enzyme had an even more dramatic effect. Researchers injected treated mice with twice the lethal level of the drug but few died, Meyers said.
Michael Darcy, former CEO of the Gateway Foundation treatment organization, is an unpaid member of AddGraft’s board of advisers. He said while the skin grafts shouldn’t be seen as a silver bullet against addiction, they could cut down on the high cost of residential treatment — or in more dire cases, prison — by shoring up a person’s biological defenses.
Wu said the company will seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin clinical trials with the treatment, but that it could take five years or longer before it’s available to the public.