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UAMS Startup Receives $14.5M to Help Drug Users Break Addiction

2 min read

InterveXion Therapeutics LLC, a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences BioVentures startup company, has received two federal grants totaling $14.5 million for development of drug therapies that can help methamphetamine drug abusers break their addiction, UAMS announced Thursday.

The therapies are designed to reduce or prevent the euphoric rush that drug users crave by keeping methamphetamine in the bloodstream and out of the brain, where the drug exerts its most powerful effects, according to a UAMS news release.

The larger of the two grants, $9.55 million over three years, will support research that will determine whether a methamphetamine vaccine may be safely advanced into a clinical trial with human participants. The vaccine is a promising new strategy that could stimulate a patient’s own immune system to generate long-acting, protective anti-methamphetamine antibodies.

The other grant of $5 million over three years will support production of the anti-methamphetamine monoclonal antibody that has been successfully tested in a first clinical study of healthy adults. The grant will also fund more research to show that the antibody is safe for methamphetamine users. The additional study will prepare researchers for the next clinical trial involving methamphetamine-using participants.

According to UAMS, this antibody does not stimulate the immune system, but it selectively and quickly binds methamphetamine in the blood and prevents it from entering the brain and other tissues where it causes multiple health problems, including addiction. It would be the first medication that can reduce methamphetamine’s effects for prolonged periods of time.

The antibody has an immediate impact on the user and is effective for about a month. The vaccine takes several weeks to become effective, and it may blunt methamphetamine’s effects for nine months or longer.

Both grants were awarded to InterveXion, an Innovate Arkansas client firm, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) with UAMS as a sub-awardee.

“These grants represent NIDA’s commitment to addressing methamphetamine abuse with promising therapies such as the monoclonal antibody and vaccine,” said InterveXion chief science officer and UAMS researcher Mike Owens, who developed both the vaccine and the antibody and has received NIDA funding since the mid-1980s. “Our team demonstrated the safety of the monoclonal antibody in a clinical trial completed last year, and we look forward to the next phases of research with both the antibody and the vaccine.”

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