A Swiss biotech firm is looking for a pharmaceutical company to help develop and market its nicotine vaccine, heralded as a potential breakthrough in helping millions of smokers kick the habit.

Cytos is one of a number of companies pioneering new biotech vaccines which could revolutionise public health and also have profound knock-on effects for the current pharmaceutical business model.

Chief executive Dr Wolfgang Renner said Cytos will be approaching big hitters within the industry, naming Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline as "natural potential partners" for the biotech company.

Promising phase II results for the vaccine have just been published, and Cytos said the product could be on the market within five years. The vaccine promises to immunise smokers against the nicotine in cigarettes which keeps them hooked, saving them from the continuing risk of lung cancer and COPD.

Lead investigator Prof Jacques Cornuz commented: "I am very excited about the outcome of this study, as the data clearly suggest that antibodies against nicotine are effective in helping people quit smoking."

The World Health Organisation estimates there are five million tobacco-related deaths per year, while in the UK the NHS spent over £30 million to help smokers quit in the eight months to December last year.

Prof Cornuz continued: "Despite the fact that smoking causes 30% of all cancer deaths, including 87% of deaths from lung cancer, there are 1.3 billion smokers worldwide. And each smoker loses on average more than 10 years of lifetime as a result of this serious addiction. I believe that the vaccine approach has the potential to dramatically alter the way we will treat smoking addiction in the future."

But Cytos, like a number of biotech companies, will need the financial support and marketing muscle of a pharma company if its product is to be successfully launched.

The vaccine works by inducing high levels of antibodies in the blood which then block nicotine from entering the brain of the smoker and producing the addictive craving.

Dr Renner said trial results provided proof of concept for the drug technology involved in the nicotine vaccine, which the company is applying to a number of therapeutic areas, including vaccines for hypertension and obesity.

Cytos has a total of 27 vaccine candidates in its pipeline and Dr Renner said the company needed to bring just one of these vaccines to market to break into profit - and potentially big profits at that.

Dr Renner, commenting on the trial results, said he was particularly excited by the results from those smokers who responded best to the vaccine. Among those who produced the most antibodies to nicotine, 57% stayed off cigarettes for up to six months.

The first large-scale human trial into a vaccine involved 341 smokers, with two-thirds receiving a vaccine and the rest a placebo. All the volunteers undertaking the trial were aged between 18 to 70 and had smoked between 10 and 40 cigarettes a day for at least three years.

Dr Renner said: "We are extremely pleased about the results as the data in the higher responder group are better than anything we have seen so far. The clear correlation between antibody levels and clinical effects greatly supports us in the further development of this vaccine."

He said the company now aimed to get everybody into this high antibody response range and would continue trials at a higher dosage.

He acknowledged being surprised by the high placebo effect, which showed that 31% of those subjected to the dummy drug stayed off cigarettes.

Cytos is set to announce trial results for vaccines against obesity, psoriasis and hypertension next year. A vaccine for Alzheimer's disease is also being co-developed with Novartis, although Dr Renner remarked that this collaboration would not necessarily be matched for other vaccines.

Meanwhile, a UK biotech company, Xenova, unveiled promising results for a similar nicotine vaccine earlier this year, but it is not as advanced as Cytos' candidate. 

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Vaccine to help smokers kick the habit shows promise 

Thursday , July 15, 2004

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