Arkansas University spin-out Intervexion raises $14.5m in federal backing for meth addiction-breaking drug.
Intervexion Therapeutics, a spin-out of Arkansas University’s Medical Services faculty, has raised $14.5m in federal funding to tackle one of the United States’ biggest menaces.
The company is developing a drug which blocks the euphoria methamphetamine addicts experience when consuming the drug by keeping it in the bloodstream and out of the brain. The drug acts as an antibody which binds to methamphetamine, effectively acting as a vaccine against the narcotic.
The grants, one of $9.55m and another of $5m, were made by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The use of the drug has boomed in recent years, overtaking the use of crack cocaine and heroin in some parts of the US due to its purity and potency. In 2012, 1.2 million Americans reportedly used the drug, with 440,000 of those questioned admitting to using it in the past month.
