Long-Acting Cocaine Hydrolase for Addiction Therapy
Abstract
Cocaine abuse is a world-wide public health and social problem without a US Food and Drug Administration-approved medication. An ideal anticocaine medication would accelerate cocaine metabolism, producing biologically inactive metabolites by administration of an efficient cocaine-specific exogenous enzyme. Our recent studies have led to the discovery of the desirable, highly efficient cocaine hydrolases (CocHs) that can efficiently detoxify and inactivate cocaine without affecting normal functions of the CNS. Preclinical and clinical data have demonstrated that these CocHs are safe for use in humans and are effective for accelerating cocaine metabolism. However, the actual therapeutic use of a CocH in cocaine addiction treatment is limited by its short biological half-life (e.g., 8 h or shorter in rats). Here we demonstrate a novel CocH form, a catalytic antibody analog, which is a fragment crystallizable (Fc)-fused CocH dimer (CocH-Fc) constructed by using CocH to replace the Fab region of human IgG1. The CocH-Fc not only has a high catalytic efficiency against cocaine but also, like an antibody, has a considerably longer biological half-life (e.g., ∼107 h in rats). A single dose of CocH-Fc was able to accelerate cocaine metabolism in rats even after 20 d and thus block cocaine-induced hyperactivity and toxicity for a long period. Given the general observation that the biological half-life of a protein drug is significantly longer in humans than in rodents, the CocH-Fc reported in this study could allow dosing once every 2-4 wk, or longer, for treatment of cocaine addiction in humans.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-12-2016
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517713113
Funding Information
This work was supported in part by NIH Grants UH2 DA041115, R01 DA035552, R01 DA032910, R01 DA013930, and R01 DA025100 and by National Science Foundation Grant CHE-1111761.
Repository Citation
Chen, Xiabin; Xue, Liu; Hou, Shurong; Jin, Zhenyu; Zhang, Ting; Zheng, Fang; and Zhan, Chang-Guo, "Long-Acting Cocaine Hydrolase for Addiction Therapy" (2016). Molecular Modeling and Biopharmaceutical Center Faculty Publications. 7.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/mmbc_facpub/7
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v. 113, no. 2, p. 422-427.