Jump to full article: Financial Times (uk), 2009-11-17
Author: Andrew Jack in London
Intro: Smoking addicts may be able to inject themselves in a few years with a vaccine to help fight their nicotine habit, following a deal between GlaxoSmithKline and biotech company Nabi Pharmaceuticals sealed yesterday.
GSK will pay $40m (€26.7m) up front and as much as $500m in the future to Nabi, which is based in Rockville, Maryland, as it tries to develop and launch the world's first anti-smoking vaccine.
The deal marks a fresh move by large pharmaceutical companies to expand their interest in vaccines, at a time of growing concern over the heavy disease burden of tobacco as one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide.
It also signals the need for fresh ways to tackle smoking, with most existing "smoking cessation" products and approaches failing to persuade smokers to keep off nicotine for long.
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