| First Author | Laudenbach M | Year | 2018 |
| Journal | Sci Rep | Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 1 | Pages | 5508 |
| PubMed ID | 29615715 | Mgi Jnum | J:263098 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6162829 | Doi | 10.1038/s41598-018-23777-6 |
| Citation | Laudenbach M, et al. (2018) Blocking interleukin-4 enhances efficacy of vaccines for treatment of opioid abuse and prevention of opioid overdose. Sci Rep 8(1):5508 |
| abstractText | Vaccines offer an option to treat heroin and prescription opioid abuse and prevent fatal overdoses. Opioid vaccines elicit antibodies that block opioid distribution to the brain and reduce opioid-induced behavioral effects and toxicity. The major limitation to the translation of addiction vaccines is that efficacy is observed only in subjects achieving optimal drug-specific serum antibody levels. This study tested whether efficacy of a vaccine against oxycodone is increased by immunomodulators targeting key cytokine signaling pathways involved in B and T cell lymphocyte activation. Blockage of IL-4 signaling increased vaccine efficacy in blocking oxycodone distribution to the brain and protection against opioid-induced behavior and toxicity in mice. This strategy generalized to a peptide-protein conjugate immunogen, and a tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine. These data demonstrate that cytokine-based immunomodulators increase efficacy of vaccines against small molecules, peptides and proteins, and identify IL-4 as a pharmacological target for improving efficacy of next-generation vaccines. |
