Scientists in Arkansas will use the NIDA grant to develop antibody-based medicines for treating medical problems associated with methamphetamine abuse. The goal of the project is to create therapeutic medications for drug overdose; for reduction of neurological and neurocognitive damage in binge users; for helping recovering addicts resist using the drug again; and to prevent or reduce the adverse health effects to chronic users.

The project also will involve experimental manufacture of the drug ingredients in crop plants. Recent breakthroughs in the processes for bioengineering of human proteins in plants, sometimes called agrimedicine, suggest that U.S. farmers eventually could produce antibodies as crops.

”Antibody-based medicines will bring us full circle from the days when traditional healers created medicines from plants. For decades, we have used chemical synthesis to manufacture therapeutic drugs, which were often based on the medicines found in plants. Since then we have learned how to create antibodies, which are part of the body’s natural defense system. Now we are studying how we can manufacture antibodies in plants,” S. Michael Owens, Ph.D., explains.

The UAMS and UAF scientists will use genetic information to create antibodies in plants and then test them for effectiveness in treating methamphetamine abuse.

Dr. Owens will be the principal director of the project. He is a Wilbur D. Mills Chair in Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Prevention in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the College of Medicine at UAMS. He also is director of the Arkansas Biosciences Institute, a new state-sponsored consortium that will use funds from the nationwide tobacco settlement to promote research and discovery at some of Arkansas’s premier research institutions.

 Donald E. McMillan, Ph.D., the first Wilbur D. Mills Chair in Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Prevention in the UAMS Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology; W. Brooks Gentry, M.D., of the departmentsof anesthesiology and pharmacology and toxicology in the UAMS College of Medicine; and Ralph Henry, Ph.D., of the Department of Biological Sciences at UAF are co-investigators in the project.

A national advisory board will assist the researchers: Barry Holtz, Ph.D., Large Scale Biology, Owensboro, Ken.; George Koob, Ph.D., The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif.; Cal McCastlain, J.D., L.L.M., an attorney with Pender, McCastlain & Park, P.A., Little Rock; Paul Pentel, M.D., Hennipen County Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN; and Carol Trapnell, M.D., GloboMax LLC, Hanover, Md.

Dr. Owens has a patent application pending for his antibody-based medications developed with scientists at the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina.
 
Links on This Page

UAMS Invests: http://www.uams.edu/today/053101/owens.htm
National Institute on Drug Abuse: http://www.nida.nih.gov/
S. Michael Owens, Ph.D.: http://www.uams.edu/pharmtox/mowens.htm
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology: http://www.uams.edu/pharmtox/pharmtox.htm
Department of Biological Sciences: http://biology.uark.edu/bisc.html