Most people would agree that it would be better to prevent cancer, if we could, than to treat it once it developed. Yet economic incentives encourage researchers to focus on treatment rather than prevention.
CANCER RESEARCH UK-funded scientists have designed a computer model that applies techniques used to analyse social networks to identify new ways of treating cancer, according to research published in PLOS Computational Biology* today (Wednesday).
The model analyses the unique behaviours of cancer-causing proteins - spotting what makes them different from normal proteins, and mapping out molecular targets for new potential drugs that could be developed to treat cancer.
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, compared proteins inside cells to members of an enormous social network, mapping the ways they interact. This allowed them to predict which proteins will be most effectively targeted with drugs.
Killing cancer with chemotherapy is a lot like a drone strike. The targeting is rarely precise enough to avoid collateral damage.
Recently, researchers have been dreaming about killing tumours – while not further damaging a sick person – with seek-and-destroy nano-robots that would carry their deadly payloads through the body and only unleash them on cancer cells. But nanotechnology isn't there yet, would be horribly expensive, plus there's the problem of the body dealing with micro-junk.
La investigación en oncología avanza a pequeños pasos. El congreso de la Sociedad Americana de Hematología (ASH) que se celebró hace unas semanas fue una prueba de ello. Más que un tratamiento revolucionario, los logros son nuevos fármacos que aportan mejoras importantes, aunque en su mayoría no definitivas, a tratamientos actuales. La sesión especial dedicada a tumores hematológicos del congreso fue una buena muestra de estos abordajes.
In 1931 German physician, physiologist and biochemist Otto Heinrich Warburg won the Nobel Prize for his discovery that cancerous cells—unlike most healthy human cells, which produce energy using oxygen via respiration—favor the anaerobic process of fermentation, or the conversion of sugar into acids, gases or alcohol, even in the presence of oxygen. This has perplexed scientists ever since because fermentation is a far less efficient means of generating energy than aerobic metabolism, hence its pejorative tag as a “wasteful metabolism.”
Roche Holding AG announced that the FDA has approved its lung cancer drug, Alecensa, for the treatment of patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have progressed on or are intolerant to Pfizer Inc.’s
Alecensa gained an accelerated approval from the FDA based on its tumor response rate and duration of response. Data from the pivotal studies suggested that Alecensa was able to shrink tumors in up to 44% of patients with ALK-positive NSCLC who had progressed on Xalkori.
In addition, Alecensa was able to shrink central nervous system (CNS) tumors in about 60% of patients.
Euclises Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel COX-2 inhibitors for use in treating certain cancers, pain and inflammation, has received a Notice of Allowance from the European Patent Office (EPO) for Patent Application No. 12879240.5 entitled, “Deuterated Benzopyran Compounds and Application Thereof.” The covered compounds have been shown to be very potent and highly selective in the inhibition the COX-2 enzyme.
An Israeli-tested drug that tackles cancer through sophisticated manipulations of the body’s natural immune system was key in helping rid former US president Jimmy Carter of life-threatening tumors that developed after he was diagnosed with melanoma earlier this year.
Researched in Israel by Professor Jacob Schachter of the Ella Institute for melanoma treatment and research at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Keytruda is part of a promising new class of drugs called immunotherapies, which harness the body’s immune system to help fight cancer.
Metformin has long been the first-line drug of choice for treating type 2 diabetes. While insulin may be better known (it’s been available since the 1920s), metformin was introduced in the UK in 1958 (FDA approval in the U.S. occurred in 1995), and metformin is now believed to be the most widely prescribed anti-diabetic drug in the world.
More recently, a tantalizing new use for metformin has begun to emerge.
Rich Heyman twice made hay developing drugs to treat cancers that depend on hormones to thrive. Now he’s trying it again with a new company markedly different than the previous two.
