{"id":422042,"date":"2025-12-03T15:18:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/422042\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T15:18:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:18:18","slug":"a-fentanyl-vaccine-is-about-to-get-its-first-major-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/422042\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fentanyl Vaccine Is About to Get Its First Major Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a tiny amount of fentanyl, the equivalent of a few grains of sand, is enough to stop a person\u2019s breathing. The synthetic opioid<\/a> is tasteless, odorless, and invisible when mixed with other substances, and drug users are often unaware of its presence.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s why biotech entrepreneur Collin Gage is aiming to protect people against the drug\u2019s lethal effects. In 2023, he became the cofounder and CEO of ARMR Sciences to develop a vaccine against fentanyl. Now, the company is launching a trial to test its vaccine in people for the first time. The goal: prevent deaths from overdose.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became very apparent to me that as I assessed the treatment landscape, everything that exists is reactionary,\u201d Gage says. \u201cI thought, why are we not preventing this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Fifty times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, fentanyl was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1968 as an intravenous pain reliever and anesthetic. Its potential for abuse was recognized even then<\/a>, and clinicians could get it only in combination with the sedative droperidol in a ratio of 50:1 droperidol to fentanyl.<\/p>\n

Cheap to make and incredibly addictive, fentanyl is now found in street drugs and counterfeit pills, because it boosts their potency and cuts costs. The drug is the biggest driver of overdose deaths in the United States and the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.<\/p>\n

Naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, can rapidly reverse overdoses caused by fentanyl and other opioids. Widespread distribution of the medication contributed to a 24 percent decline<\/a> in US drug overdose deaths in 2024. It works by attaching to opioid receptors throughout the body and displacing the opioid molecules that are attached there.<\/p>\n

But a vaccine like the one ARMR Sciences is developing would be given before a person even encounters the drug. Gage likens it to a bulletproof vest or a suit of armor\u2014hence the company\u2019s name. (It was previously registered as Ovax but switched names in January.) \u201cThis is something that could completely change the paradigm of how we deal with overdose, because it doesn\u2019t require someone to be carrying the treatment on them,\u201d Gage says.<\/p>\n

Opioid vaccines were initially proposed in the 1970s, but after early attempts at heroin vaccines failed, much of the research was abandoned. The modern opioid epidemic has led to a resurgence of interest, with backing from the US government<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just a tiny amount of fentanyl, the equivalent of a few grains of sand, is enough to stop…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":422043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1230,210,159,67,132,68,2857],"class_list":{"0":"post-422042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-drugs","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-vaccines"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115656308775819381","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}