Miriam Fauzia | The Dallas Morning News (TNS)
A fentanyl vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Houston is expected to head to clinical trials sometime in the middle of next year, with the hope of being a groundbreaking solution to a deadly crisis.
The vaccine, which has shown success in animal studies, is designed to stop the highly addictive opioid from entering the brain and causing an overdose. Biopharmaceutical startup Ovax acquired the license to produce and test the vaccine in November 2023 and raised over $10 million toward that effort by June.
“We’re all incredibly excited,” said Collin Gage, the start-up’s co-founder and chief executive officer. He added that his company is starting at “ground zero,” but he is confident it will one day have a fentanyl vaccine available to the public.
That day may be a long time from now. While public health emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, can accelerate a vaccine’s development, testing a new vaccine can take anywhere from five to 10 years — sometimes longer.
Meanwhile, fentanyl overdose deaths have been on the rise in Texas, from less than 80 in 2014 to nearly 2,300 in 2023, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. The synthetic opioid — made illegally but also available by prescription — is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, making it the deadliest drug in the opioid crisis.
For fentanyl vaccines, adjuvants are key
The idea of creating an opioid vaccine has drawn scientific attention since the 1970s. Unlike bacteria or viruses, opioids aren’t recognized by our immune systems as foreign invaders. But the immune system can be trained to make antibodies in response to an opioid like fentanyl through a vaccine that links bits of the drug to noninfectious bits of bacteria and uses substances called adjuvants.
Adjuvants are designed to enhance immune response, and are particularly important in vaccines targeting substance…
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