Synthetic Molecules Based on Curcumin Show Promise Against Cancer

Centuries of anecdotal (and more recently, scientific) evidence shows that curcumin—a chemical found in the spice turmeric—is capable of protecting against multiple diseases, including cancer. When ingested, however, curcumin is not absorbed well by the digestive system, instead being mostly eliminated before it can be useful to the body.

Now scientists at Ohio State University have created synthetic compounds based on curcumin that, in the lab at least, kill cancer cells and stop cancer from spreading. The compounds have been tested in computer simulations and, in some cases, in human cells in the lab. The computer-based predictions indicate that the most effective compound developed so far by the Ohio State lab may be effective in up to 50 percent of all breast and prostate cancers. Some of the compounds also show potential to kill pancreatic cancer cells and inhibit cancer cell migration.

The team is planning to continue refining the compounds before advancing to animal studies to test their effectiveness. The scientists hope to develop a chemotherapeutic agent available in pill form.

The Future of Drug Development?

Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co. is taking an unusual step to help advance two drugs in its pipeline for treatment of Alzheimer's Disease—it is allowing a hedge fund, TPG-Axon Capital, to invest directly in the drugs. The investments, totaling $325 million, will help cover the costs to finish development and conduct clinical tests on the two drugs. In return for its investment, TPG-Axon will receive milestone payments as the drugs progress through the pipeline and a percentage of revenues if either of the drugs makes it to market. This is not the first time Lilly has taken this type of investment. Lilly allowed NovaQuest, an organization that helps drug companies manage the risks of developing and launching drugs, to invest in Cymbalta, an antidepressant. Since then, NovaQuest has reaped 8.25 percent of Cymbalta's sales.

Lilly has a history of thinking outside the box when it comes to drug discovery, development, and marketing. In 2001, the company spun off its eLilly initiative as InnoCentive (which I've blogged about here and here), an organization that uses the power of crowds to solve problems for companies whose own researchers have struggled to solve them.

Could investing in individual drugs be the future of the pharmaceutical industry? Would structuring a drug company in such a way allow people who are victims of an illness or family members of victims to drive development of treatments? But more importantly, is it possible that this could lead to drug companies whose motivation is to keep researching drugs rather than marketing them? For instance, if an illness has a low incidence, could a drug company make more money by stringing along treatment in exchange for further investment, rather than releasing and marketing the drug?

Those are tough questions to answer now, but as this business model spreads, answers will be revealed.

Robotic Surgery Lowers Risks of Side Effects

Technology has long been used to help people do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, and that's not going to change any time soon. A new advance in this area is robotic surgery. CNN reports on the growth in usage of robotic surgery devices made by Intuitive Surgical, Inc., and reveals that patients who undergo robotic surgeries have fewer side effects and faster recoveries.

The systems work by allowing a skilled surgeon to control the robotic arms using a joystick. The robotic arms are more precise than human hands and work with smaller incisions. As a result, robotic surgeries often have fewer complications. For example, when a patient's prostate is removed via normal surgery, there are risks of incontinence and impotence. Robotic prostatectomies, on the other hand, have much lower risks for those side effects, meaning that patients are less likely to suffer from decreased quality of life.

While the results look good so far, the American Urological Association has not pushed for an increase in robotic prostate surgeries. Experts there feel that, while there are advantages to robotic surgeries, the data is not overwhelmingly in the machines' favor.

Robotic surgeries are also available for hysterectomies, kidney surgery, and some heart procedures.

Breakthrough Treatment Could Halt Alzheimer's Progression

I've posted a couple of times lately about recent advances in understanding and treating Alzheimer's disease. Now researchers at the University of Aberdeen in the UK and TauRx Therapeutics in Singapore have announced a new drug, called Rember^TM, which dissolves the tangles of tau fibers which form inside nerve cells in the brain and destroy neurons critical for memory.

In the trials of people with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's, patients given 60mg of Rember over 50 weeks showed an 81 percent reduction in mental decline. Over 19 months, patients on Rember showed no significant decline in mental function, while patients on the placebo grew steadily worse.

Additional, larger trials are planned and Rember could be available as early as 2012.

Exercise in a Pill

So the big news today, if you've been reading science sites and blogs, is the so-called "exercise pill." Researchers have devised a couple of drugs that could affect how you exercise. The first drug—called AICAR—was given to sedentary mice—those that were not exercising. After four weeks on the drug, the treated mice burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice, and were able to run on a treadmill about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer than the untreated mice.

The second drug—called GW1516—was given to mice that were exercising. After a month of exercise and the drug, the mice were able to run 68 percent longer and 70 percent farther than mice that exercised but were not given the drug. And when those mice were dissected, the researchers saw that the number of high-efficiency muscle fibers in their bodies had increased by 29 percent.

On the one hand, I think perhaps I've been working too hard at this whole getting-in-shape thing. But on the other hand, I realize that exercise has benefits beyond just what these pills are providing. When I go out for a jog, I'm not just lowering fat and building muscle, I'm strengthing my joints and bones as well. Not to mention, I'm engaging in social interaction with the other joggers in my training program.

So, while these drugs aren't readily available now, I'm not sure I'd be that interested in AICAR even if it was. But GW1516—which would help me improve faster from my exercise—might be something I'd be interested in.

New Prostate Cancer Treatment Works Wonders

The Los Angeles Times is running a story today about a prostate cancer study conducted in Britain that resulted in a dramatic shrinkage in prostate tumors, resulting in a survival rate that more than doubled for 70% to 80% of patients in the trial with aggressive cancers. The drug used in the study, called abiraterone, should be available by 2011.

The drug works by blocking an enzyme called cytochrome P17, which helps convert cholesterol to testosterone. By doing so, the drug blocks the ability of the body to produce testosterone, which fuels prostate cancer. The drug also blocks the production of estrogen.

The initial study consisted of only 21 patients, but a new study is underway involving 250, and early results seem to show the same progress. A study is also underway to evaluate the drug's use for breast cancer, but no results have been released yet.

Most patients diagnosed with prostate cancer die within six months. Some of the patients in the original study have been on the treatment for as long as 32 months and are still doing well, with smaller tumors and less pain. And considering that the patients used in these trials were at the end stage of the disease, with aggressive tumors in the worst stage of cancer, and for whom normal treatments such as chemical castration were ineffective, these results are spectacular.

When the drug is released to the market, I suspect that it will quickly become a first-line treatment for prostate cancer, replacing chemical castration. If that happens, the survival rate for prostate cancer should improve greatly.

Several New Alzheimer's Studies Report Results

Some interesting Alzheimer's disease news recently. New Scientist reports that an old Russian allergy treatment, Dimebon, has yielded the best results of any drug ever tested against Alzheimer's, raising average scores of practical cognitive abilities almost seven points above the placebo. The study was placebo-controlled and used 120 patients over the span of a year.

At the same time, Alzheimer's patients given a vaccine to remove amyloid beta plaques from their brains successfully had the plaques removed, but doing so did not alleviate or reverse any symptoms. The results suggest that the plaques are causing inflammation in the brain, but removing the plaques after the inflammation does not appear to help. Preventing the amyloid beta plaques from forming, however, may help prevent some of the damage and protect cognitive function.

Speaking of inflammation, another study performed in Los Angeles revealed the possibility of dramatic and fast improvement in language recall in patients given an injection of the anti-inflammatory drug etanercept, marketed as Enbrel. This study was a follow-up to a single-patient study reported in January and involved only 12 patients. Critics caution that the small size of the study and the fact that it was neither blinded nor placebo-controlled call into question the validity of the results. They also point out that the only tests that have shown positive results come from the researcher who has patented the process and charges between $10,000 and $40,000 per treatment.

Still, if anti-inflammatory drugs can prevent, reduce, or reverse the inflammation caused by the amyloid beta plaques, it would be a remarkable breakthrough in treatment of this debilitating disease. Hopefully soon an independent lab will follow up this study with a large group, placebo-controlled, double-blinded study to confirm or debunk these results.

Clinton Foundation Works Out Deal For Cheaper Malaria Treatments

The Clinton Foundation has worked out a complex deal involving Chinese wormwood farmers, Indian chemical companies, and Indian pharmaceutical companies that will result in less expensive anti-malaria drugs. Malaria affects roughly 515 million people each year, with between one and three million deaths.

The deal will help to control the price of wormwood, the source of a compound called artemisinin that has been used since 2004 to treat malaria. Since the discovery of artemisinin, the price of wormwood has gone from $115 per pound to $500 per pound, then down to $70 per pound. The deal will control the price of wormwood at not more than $137 per pound, while also controlling the prices of the medication. That will make it easier for sufferers in poorer countries—where the disease is most common—to afford the treatments they need.

Malaria has an interesting history, having been a part of the human condition for at least 50,000 years. In the early parts of the twentieth century, patients with syphilis were intentionally inflicted with malaria to induce a fever, which was then controlled with quinine. This had a risk of causing death from malaria, but that was considered preferable to the almost-certain death from the syphilis.

Kudos to Bill Clinton and his Foundation for taking this important step to help alleviate suffering in the poorer parts of the world.

Can Gardasil Cause Medical Problems?

Could the HPV vaccine Gardasil^TM be causing medical problems ranging from nausea to death? Maybe, says the CDC, which is investigating. Over the past two years, 7,802 "adverse event reports" have been filed related to Gardasil. Fifteen of them claimed that the vaccine caused the death of the patient. Only ten of those cases were confirmed, and none of them were actually linked to the vaccine.

But what about the other symptoms? In one case, a girl developed fever and pain shortly after receiving the Gardasil injection. She was admitted to the hospital where she underwent two surgeries for pancreatitis and spent weeks recovering. But were her symptoms related to the vaccine or not? Could it be a coincidence? Did she just happen to get the shot as she was developing pancreatitis?

It's hard to say. Scientists and doctors are looking into it now to try to make a determination.

In the meantime, though, I feel I should point out that more than 8 million women and girls in the U.S. alone have received the injection over the past two years, which puts that 7,802 "adverse event reports" at a frequence below 0.1 percent. So even if they all do turn out to be related to the vaccine—which is highly unlikely—the likelihood of a negative reaction is extremely low, and must be weighed against the risk of HPV and cervical cancer. In some cases, the treatment can be worse than the condition it's meant to treat, but I don't believe this is one of those cases.

The Future of Disease Fighting

Discover magazine recently published a brief list of five coming advances in antibiotics that reveals some interesting—and possibly life-saving—bio-technology on the horizon.

Some of these, such as phages and alligator blood, were not new to me. Phages have been studied for years, but they have certain drawbacks, such as the fact that every distinct strain of a bacteria requires its own phages. So not only would the doctor need to know that you have a staph infection, he or she would need to know exactly which strain of staph in order to use the right phages. Alligator blood and frog skin, though, are rather interesting. Both of these critters inhabits swampy areas that tend to have much higher concentrations of pathogens, and they have evolved defense mechanisms to protect themselves. Now scientists are working on ways to bring those same defense mechanisms to people.

Synthetic antimicrobial peptides have a lot of promise, and may be one of the first on this list to make it into commercial use. After all, they are based on natural peptides, but they are more effective and cheaper to produce. Plus, in a series of tests, the synthetic peptides (called peptoids) wiped out all six bacterial cultures to which they were exposed.

Finally, I'm fascinated by the discovery that cholesterol-lowering drugs may be useful in battling bacteria. And, when given to mice which were then infected with MRSA, the drugs showed a 98 percent reduction in bacteria concentrations versus mice not given the drugs. Good news for me, since I'm on cholesterol medication.

RotaTeq Very Effective Against Rotavirus

The Los Angeles Times reports that RotaTeq vaccine for rotavirus has been very successful. The most recent onset of the rotavirus season was delayed by three months and reduced in severity by about half thanks to the virus, according to the CDC.

Rotavirus is the leading cause of vomiting and diarrhea in children in the U.S. and globally. In the U.S., it leads to more than 400,000 visits to doctors' offices, 272,000 emergency room trips, up to 70,000 hospitalizations, and 20 to 60 deaths. Globally, more than 500,000 children die from rotavirus each year.

Rotateq, on the other hand, can prevent rotavirus infections in 74 percent of cases. It also eliminates 98 percent of severe infections and 96 percent of hospitalizations. For these reasons, the CDC recommends that infants receive their first vaccination at 12 weeks and two more by 32 weeks of age. RotaTeq is made by Merck.

CNN Article About Volunteering for Clinical Trials

I wrote a post last year about volunteering to be a test subject for clinical research trials. Now CNN has an article on their website called Do you want to be a guinea pig (I think they left out the "Hey Buddy" part at the beginning), highlighting the increasing need for test subjects in clinical trials.

There are positives and negatives to participating in clinical trials. The biggest positives, in my mind, are that you generally get your medications and doctor's office visit paid for as part of the trial, and that you are helping to advance our knowledge of science and our ability to treat various medical conditions. Oh, and sometimes they actually give you money, too.

There are risks and drawbacks as well. For starters, if it's a blinded study (and they usually are), you don't know whether you're actually getting the test medication or a placebo. My local clinic sent me an offer to participate in a study of cholesterol medication, but it would have required that I stop taking the cholesterol medication I'm currently on, and only having a 50/50 chance of getting the study medication. That would have meant a 50 percent chance of not taking any cholesterol medication at all. Thanks, but no thanks. I'm more than willing to participate in the studies that are looking for "healthy volunteers" because those studies—usually earlier in the process—are designed to help figure out what tolerable, safe levels of the medication are. Basically, they're designed to compare any symptoms patients may get while taking various dosages of the medication to symptoms people who are taking the placebo get.

The CNN report has some tips you should ask before volunteering for any trials, so it's a good resource to take a look at if you've considered volunteering for any trials, maybe as a way to make a little extra cash in these tight times.

Breakthrough in Understanding Alzheimer's Disease

People who suffer from Alzheimer's disease are found to have plaques made up of a substance called Beta Amyloid in their brains. Some scientists have believed that Beta Amyloid is the cause of Alzheimer's, but because Beta Amyloid is also sometimes found in the brains of patients who don't have the disease, other scientists have believed that Beta Amyloid is part of the body's response to Alzheimer's.

According to a CNN report, researchers have now discovered that one specific form of Beta Amyloid, when injected into the brains of mice, caused Alzheimer's-like symptoms, but other forms did not. That could explain why some people with Beta Amyloid in their brains do not have Alzheimer's—they have one of the other two versions of the plaques.

The work will need to be duplicated, but this discovery could be just the breakthrough that was needed to help provide better understanding of Alzheimer's and eventually—hopefully—lead to better treatments and possibly a cure.

Body's Own Immune System Used to Wipe Out Cancer

New research reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that researchers have succeeded in using a patient's own immune system to destroy late-stage malignant tumor cells. The researchers, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, say that this is the first time that immunotherapy has worked on its own, without assistance from drugs or chemotherapy.

The researchers used CD4+ infection-fighting blood T-cells from a patient and cloned them in vitro. Once they had about five billion of the cloned cells, the infused them back into the patient. Two months later, the patient's PET and CT scans revealed that the patient was tumor free. Two years later, he remained free of cancer.

Lead study author Cassian Yee says that the process has only been tried on a single patient so far. Another trial involving between 10 and 20 patients will begin soon and, if that test and subsequent trials are successful, this therapy could become a viable treatment option within five years.

Carbon Nanotubes May Help Bone Growth

Eric Berger, who writes the SciGuy blog for the Houston Chronicle writes about a study conducted at Rice University that used carbon nanotubes to help support bone growth in rabbit test subjects.

Two groups of rabbits were studied. One group received scaffolds made of 100% polypropylene fumarate, or PPF, which had performed well for bone growth scaffolding in previous studies. The second group received scaffolds made of 99.5% PPF and 0.5% single-walled carbon nanotubes.

The group that received that scaffolds that included the nanotubes showed substantially better bone growth at 12 weeks than the rabbits that received PPF-only scaffolds. Also, the composite scaffolds contained about two-thirds as much bone as the native bone tissues nearby, whereas the PPF contained only about one-fifth as much.

Researchers aren't sure why the carbon nanotubes had such a strong impact yet, and no research has been done in humans. But once this research advances further, we may find new ways to help heal bone fractures faster and more effectively.

Targeting Viruses With Laser Precision

According to a Discover magazine report, a physicist at Arizone State University, Kong-Thon Tsen, has developed a way to use lasers tuned to a specific frequency of light to kill viruses. It turns out that the outer shells of viruses are rigid and have certain frequencies that can set up an unstable feedback in the harmonic oscillations of the virus' shells, destroying them.

In test tubes, Tsen's group has used this technology to destroy the outer shell—or capsid—of HIV samples. And because the capsids of viruses are different, disrupting the HIV capsids should not have any side effects within the body.

None of this research has been tested in vivo yet, but within the next couple of years Tsen's group plans to test the technology on HIV in monkeys by zapping blood outside the body. Basically, the process will use dialysis machines to cycle the blood out, destroy the viruses without affecting the blood cells, and cycle the clean blood back into the body.

The research has not been published, and more work needs to be done. In all, FDA approval is probably more than a decade away. But this technology, if proven, could be used to destroy just about any blood-borne virus.

Incurable Disease Cured With Stem Cells

The Los Angeles Times reports that a two-year-old Minnesota boy, Nate Liao, was apparently cured of a previously incurable genetic disease through the application of stem cells from umbilical cord blood and bone marrow. The disease, epidermolysis bullosa, causes children to lack a protein called collagen type VII, which is important for skin and the gastrointestinal system.

Seven months after the stem cell treatment, Nate's body produces collagen type VII as it should. His skin has improved and he no longer has to eat pureed food. He can wear normal clothes and play with other children.

The technique—developed by Dr. Angela M. Christiano of Columbia University Medical Center—has since been used to treat Nate's older brother Jacob and will soon be used to treat a nine-month-old girl in Folsom, California.

Sucking Out Clots Improved Angioplasty Results

Researchers at University Medical Centre Groningen in the Netherlands have conducted a study that shows that thrombus aspiration—sucking clots out of arteries—just before angioplasty can reduce the mortality rate following heart attacks, according to the Los Angeles Times. About 5.6% of patients who received thrombus aspiration either died or suffered a second heart attack in the first year, compared with 9.9% of patients who only received angioplasty.

Expectations are that the procedure will be most useful for patients with larger clots or later angioplasties. These types of results are good news for people like me, with a family history of heart problems. I'm almost certain to have a heart attack at some point in time and anything that improves my chances of survival is good news. Then again, it should be pointed out that the company that sponsored the study is the company that makes the equipment used for the thrombus aspiration. So, as usual, I'd like to see some neutral follow-up studies conducted to demonstrate the same results.

Treat Depression by Growing New Brain Cells

The Booster Shots blog at the Los Angeles Times reports that a company called BrainCells, Inc., has begun phase two testing of a compound to treat depression and anxiety. Nothing new so far, but BrainCells plans to treat these diseases by promoting neurogenesis—the growth of new neurons—in the brain.

Company co-founder Fred Gage rocked the scientific world about ten years ago with a paper showing that adult brain cells could regenerate over time. While those findings are fully accepted these days, some researchers are skeptical that neurogenesis will work as a treatment for depression. Whether it works for depression or not, this is a valuable area of research that could be use to treat a number of brain and nervous-system conditions.

Synthetic Yeast Creates Malaria Drug

According to New Scientist, researchers in California are scaling up for industrial production a process to produce a synthetic strain of yeast engineered to produce a compound called artemisinin, which is used to treat malaria. The current process used to produce the medicine is expensive, but this new process has been optimized such that—within two to three years—they could produce enough of the drug to meet the needs of the entire world.

Attempts to use living organisms to produce medicines have been underway for several years now. If the artemisinin process being commercialized (by Sanofi-Aventis) is successful, it would be the first major production of medication using a synthetic organism.