Only minuscule an amount of fentanyl equivalent to a few grains of sand is enough to stop breathing. Synthetic opioid is tasteless, fragrance-free and undetectable when mixed with other substances, and drug users are often unaware of its presence.
That’s why biotech entrepreneur Collin Gage is working to protect people from the drug’s deadly effects. In 2023, he became co-founder and CEO of ARMR Sciences, whose task is to develop a vaccine against fentanyl. Now the company is starting to try to test its vaccine on humans for the first time. Goal: prevent overdose deaths.
“It became obvious to me that as I evaluated treatment options, everything that existed was reactionary,” Gage says. “I thought: Why don’t we prevent this?”
Fentanyl, fifty times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1968 as an intravenous pain reliever and anesthetic. The potential for abuse was there recognized even thenand clinicians could only obtain it in combination with the sedative droperidol at a 50:1 droperidol to fentanyl ratio.
Affordable to produce and extremely addictive, fentanyl is now found in street drugs and counterfeit pills because it increases their potency and lowers costs. The drug is the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States and the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.
Naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, can quickly reverse the effects of overdoses caused by fentanyl and other opioids. Widespread distribution of the drug contributed to: A drop of 24%. drug overdose deaths in the US in 2024. It works by attaching to opioid receptors throughout the body and displacing the opioid molecules attached to them.
However, a vaccine like the one being developed by ARMR Sciences will be administered before a person is even exposed to the drug. Gage compares it to a bulletproof vest or body armor – hence the company’s name. (It was previously registered as Ovax, but changed its name in January). “This is something that could completely change the paradigm of overdose management because it doesn’t require someone to carry the drug,” Gage says.
Opioid vaccines were initially proposed in the 1970s, but after the failure of early heroin vaccine trials, most studies were abandoned. The state-of-the-art opioid epidemic has led to a resurgence of interest, including: US government support.