---
title: "Scientists Propose Gene Hack to Make Cocaine Less Fun"
description: "Scientists have plans to battle cocaine addictions with a promising new tool: Using gene therapy to make cocaine less addictive."
date: "2020-02-17"
modified: "2020-02-17"
authors:
  - name: "Foster Kamer"
    job_title: "Editor-in-Chief"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/foster"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-propose-gene-hack-to-make-cocaine-less-fun"
categories:
  - "Health & Medicine"
  - "Prosthetics and Devices"
tags:
  - "cocaine"
  - "gene therapy"
  - "the digest"
---

# Scientists Propose Gene Hack to Make Cocaine Less Fun

![Scientists have plans to battle cocaine addictions with a promising new tool: Using gene therapy to make cocaine less addictive.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/scientists-propose-gene-hack-make-cocaine-less-fun.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Marco Verch/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Party's Over

Mayo Clinic scientists have proposed a new treatment for cocaine addiction, that's, somehow, taken humans over two millennia to figure out:

Make it less fun.

## More Like No-caine

Writing in *The Conversation,* a pair of University of Tennessee scientist [report that](<https://theconversation.com/potential-gene-therapy-to-combat-cocaine-addiction-129667>) Mayo Clinic researchers have published [a paper](<https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/hum.2019.233>) with the whimsically longwinded title "Systemic Safety of a Recombinant AAV8 Vector for Human Cocaine Hydrolase Gene Therapy: A Good Laboratory Practice Preclinical Study in Mice."

Long story short, it appears that injections of a neurotransmitter-regulating human protein produced positive results for reducing cocaine addiction in mice.

Problem is, daily injections are too impractical to be a realistic therapy. So the Mayo researchers asked: Why not use advances in gene therapy to give bodies the instructions to keep making these super-proteins on their own? The initial results of mice trials were so substantial, the FDA has approved the study for humans.

## More Like Slow-caine

But don't expect to see this on the menu at a rehab clinic anytime soon.

Research on humans could take years, and the long-term affects of this kind of gene therapy are still poorly understood. These initial results are promising, though — and not just for this specific application, but the seemingly endless possibilities of gene therapy, too.

Cocaine, on the other hand, could not be more disappointed.

**READ MORE:** [A Potential Gene Therapy Could Combat Cocaine Addiction](<https://theconversation.com/potential-gene-therapy-to-combat-cocaine-addiction-129667>) \[*The Conversation*\]

**More on cocaine:** *[Scientists Kept Rats Sober by Deleting Memories of Cocaine](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/erasing-memories-cocaine-use-drug>)*

**More on cocaine:** *[Magnetic Brain Stimulation Could Help Users Overcome Cocaine Addictions](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/magnetic-brain-stimulation-could-help-cocaine-users-beat-their-addictions>)*

**More on cocaine:** [*She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie, She Don't Lie*](<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYS732zyYfU&t=2m25s>)

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/foster.bsky.social>)