Nicotine in a pill? Maybe, but not as a smoking-cessation tool. Today a handful of research companies are looking at nicotine-based pills as a potential therapy for people with Alzheimer's disease, ulcerative colitis and other disorders.
Leading the pack in North America is Targacept, a company founded by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, one of the world's largest cigarette manufacturers. Dr. Geoffrey Dunbar, Targacept's vice-president of clinical development, says their first product, aimed at patients with ulcerative colitis, may be available by 2005.
Dunbar emphasized that the new therapies have nothing to do with tobacco plants, because the nicotine used will be synthetic. Why, then, is R.J. Reynolds involved? Dunbar isn't sure. “R.J. Reynolds spent a lot of money, for whatever reason, in developing this science,” he says.
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