When it comes to smoking cigarettes, there’s nothing good about it as such practices are one of the leading cause of throat cancer, but who cares about that when the itch to have a smoke takes over the whole body. The world view smoking as a natural habit, it is accepted, though no one tend to realize how addictive nicotine is, which makes it quite difficult for cigarette smokers to quit.

With that in mind, scientists are planning to come up with a vaccine that is capable of making cigarette addicts immune to nicotine. Now, you might say that is impossible, but hey, before the age of telephones, millions of people were most likely discussing how it would be impossible to use a weird looking device to have a conversation with someone 500 miles away in real-time.

The nicotine killing vaccine idea comes from Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, the scientists there plan on creating nanoscale structures that are assembled from DNA’s to fight nicotine addiction and hopefully killing it once and for all.

“The DNA nanostructure enables rational design and construction of synthetic vaccines, because of its precision control over the placement of various antigenic components,” Yung Chang, a professor in the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Infectious Diseases. “This approach may offer a new strategy to improve the efficacy of many different vaccines.”

The National Institute of Drug Abuse has donated $3.3 million to Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, in hopes that this new method of fighting nicotine addiction will become a reality in the years to come.

Addiction to nicotine is not an easy thing to overcome, sometimes rehab is no help whatsoever, and this is why we would love to see this project come to fruition. Millions of lives would be saved, or maybe just the millions who would be able to afford the treatment because as per usual, they probably won’t make it affordable.

[via Asu News]