URI students raising guide dogs are (back row, left to right) Caitlyn Landry with dog Katie and Katie LaBlue with Pogo; (front row) Jenna Beauchemin, Kaitlin Kohut with Tessi, and Sarah Appleton with Romeo.
Students Train Guide Dogs Caitlyn Landry ’20 and Kaitlin Kohut ’20, freshman roommates, formed the Puppy Raisers Club at URI last year, becoming certified through the nonprofit Guiding Eyes for the Blind. Four yellow Labrador retrievers spend all day every day training with the students and the growing numbers of their club. After about 18 months they will complete a test that determines their future careers: Some will become guide dogs, others will work with police to be drug detectors or serve in a “healing autism” program. “It’s not going to be easy to give up the dogs,” says Kohut, “but you know they have a bigger purpose in life.”
A Vaccine for Nicotine
URI pharmacy researcher Xinyuan “Shawn” Chen is working on a vaccine that would inoculate people against nicotine’s addictive properties, coupled with a novel skin delivery system that could revolutionize the way all vaccines are delivered. Right now, there are nicotine patches aimed at people trying to give up smoking, but they simply deliver a low dose of the potent drug to ease cravings. Chen is working on something very different: a vaccine that would trigger a user’s own immune system to block nicotine’s entry into the brain. There are no approved nicotine vaccines on the market at present, partly because to be effective, the vaccine requires powerful adjuvants, substances that would be toxic if injected. That’s where the patch comes in. In a painless process, skin is pierced by a laser to form an 8 QUADANGLES SPRING 2016
array of micro-channels, then a small square of contact lens material filled with tiny dots of powder is placed on top. The clear patch, which is about the size of a thumbnail, can deliver 810 micrograms of medicine— as opposed to the 45 micrograms contained in a typical flu shot—and do it without triggering a painful reaction. The patches would also travel and store well. “Generally, vaccines are liquid, but powdered vaccines are more convenient and they have a longer shelf life,” Chen says. The assistant professor of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences has a lab in URI’s three-year-old, $75-million College of Pharmacy building. He came here last year from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, bringing with him a $1.08-million career development grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse and a
Xinyuan Chen, assistant professor of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences, holds the patch next to a traditional hypodermic needle.
$432,000 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The technology will need several years before it’s ready for clinical tests and FDA approval, but Chen is already imagining a different world, with fewer smokers, and one with children who don’t fear the doctor’s office because the 30 or 40 vaccine injections the typical baby receives will be a thing of the past. “We want to help those who are already addicted to nicotine, to help them quit smoking,” he says. “We also believe for other vaccines, that we could put multiple vaccines in one patch, thereby eliminating the need for multiple injections.”