PILL COULD HELP CURE ADDICTIONS

A drug to help people stop smoking cigarettes by blocking cannabis
receptors in the brain is being tested in Melbourne, with encouraging early
results.

The drug, which is taken daily as a pill, is being tested on 75 people at
the Alfred Hospital.

Professor Jayashri Kulkarni of the hospital and Monash University, said
there had been a flood of interest in the two-year program, with
participants showing encouraging early signs. "They've said it's the first
time they've not had a craving for a cigarette," she said.

Professor Kulkarni said treating nicotine addiction was the first step in
research that could also prove effective in treating cannabis addiction and
obesity. These are thought to be guided by the same cannabis receptors as
nicotine.

She said some current treatments for cannabis, nicotine and heroin were
"total crap", likening their use to the bygone era when tuberculosis was
treated with green tea. Medical science hadn't equipped people with the
best ways to deal with their addictions and had placed too much
responsibility on the individual, she said.

Professor Kulkarni revealed the research yesterday at Addiction: What if
it's Genetic?, a public forum with experts in medical science, youth work
and the law, an event associated with the 19th International Congress of
Genetics that opens today in Melbourne.

The congress, described as the "Olympics of genetics" draws together six
Nobel Laureates, 300 international speakers and more than 2700 delegates
from 67 countries, over six days. It is the first time the congress has
been held in the southern hemisphere.

Yesterday's forum also heard from Professor Jay Hirsh, from the University
of Virginia in the United States, who is studying the effects of crack
cocaine on fruit flies and rodents to help understand cocaine addiction in
humans.

Professor Hirsh's breakthrough research has shown that the circadian gene
pathway is responsible for the fly's ability to be addicted to cocaine -
the same pathway that determines our sleep patterns and 24-hour clock.

He said the research had long-term potential for pharmaceutical companies
to develop drugs that may change the function of the gene products to
reduce the likelihood of addictive behaviour.

There were also possibilities of nullifying the effect of the cocaine by
changing the function of the gene, he said.

Professor Hirsh and fellow panellist Professor Wayne Hall, director of
public policy and ethics at the University of Queensland's Institute of
Molecular Bioscience, said addiction was probably half determined by
genetics and half by environmental factors.

Professor Hall said there was no single gene that determined addiction and
warned against simplifying the term "genetic condition".

"Most conditions that are common that cause premature death and disability
involve multiple genes and multiple environmental effects," he said.

Professor Hirsh said his studies on rodents showed there was a minimum of
30 genes that had the potential to dictate our propensity for addiction.

Les Twentyman of Open Family Australia and a youth worker for 25 years,
told the forum he was excited that medical science was investigating
addiction. He said he hoped the researchers' work would help drug addicts
to be treated in the health system instead of the criminal system, which
amplified negative environmental factors associated with addiction and left
too many young people dead.

Yesterday's forum was one of more than a dozen public events associated
with the congress, many of them free.

A spokeswoman for the Treasurer and Innovation Minister, John Brumby, said
it was appropriate that Melbourne hosted the congress as it was home to
most of Australia's biotechnology companies.