Gene-Edited Skin Patch Prevents Cocaine Overdose in Mice

With a built-in supply of a powerful cocaine-chomping enzyme, the transplant might also curb addiction.

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There are nicotine patches to help quit smoking, and then there’s this: patches of actual skin, genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that digests cocaine, and, when transplanted onto mice, arms them against otherwise-lethal doses of the drug. A study on the skin-patch strategy, which the authors hope could one day lead to a means of treating addiction and preventing overdoses in humans, appears today (September 17) in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“Cocaine addiction is very common . . . but right now there’s no treatment at all to either prevent addictive behavior or [treat] cocaine overdose—there’s no FDA-approved drug,” says Xiaoyang Wu, a stem cell researcher at the University of Chicago and coauthor of the study.

Wu’s team had previously used CRISPR gene editing to make a skin patch with cells that manufactured insulin for diabetic mice, and he wondered whether the principle could also ...

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Meet the Author

  • Shawna Williams

    Shawna was an editor at The Scientist from 2017 through 2022. She holds a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Colorado College and a graduate certificate and science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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