Thursday, November 01, 2007

A little good news on cancer for a change

Disclaimer first, this is an experimental drug showing good results in mice.  Not humans.
A new study of an estrogen-derived drug shows promise as a treatment for breast cancer and breast cancer metastases to bone.

The study, which was done in mice, appears on the cover of the November issue of Cancer Research.

[snippage]

In studies of other cancers, 2ME2 has been shown to induce cancer cells to self-destruct. Otherwise, tumor cells evade this process allowing them to continually divide and spread throughout the body.

Clinical trials of 2ME2 for breast cancer patients are in progress. These trials are based on an oral version of 2ME2 to treat primary tumors, but this method has limitations as the oral version of 2ME2 is poorly suited to getting into the blood system and reaching tumors. Researchers resolved this problem by delivering 2ME2 by injection and found it was much more effective.

[more snippage]

Researchers described 2ME2 as an “attractive candidate for controlling tumor growth, metastasis to bone and bone disorders,” such as osteolysis caused by the spread of breast cancer.

“This is potentially of very substantial importance because this agent has few of the unpleasant side effects of most chemotherapy drugs and targets both bone resorption and the cancerous tumor cells,” Turner said. “It really is the first agent that has been clearly demonstrated to do that.”

So there you go, some nice hopeful info for you to balance off the land slide of daily bullshit.  If the stuff is in drug trials in one form and it passes, it could end up on the market in the other form as well assuming no deal breaking side effects crop up.  Like extra nose syndrome!  When something shows good results like this they sometimes fast track the hell out of it.

The Bony Phantom

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