Accidental fungus leads to promising cancer drug

[nightowl]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080629/...noparticles_dc


nightowl

[scorpiotiger]

nightowl, the drug is made from a fungus.

totally different thing.

but it is a very interesting article. thanks for posting it.

[scorpiotiger]

from the article posted by nightowl:

But the drug affected the brain, causing depression, dizziness and other side-effects. It also did not stay in the body long and required constant infusions. The lab dropped it.

Efforts to improve it did not work well. Then Benny and colleagues tried nanotechnology, attaching two "pom-pom"-shaped polymers to TNP-470, protecting it from stomach acid.

In mice, the altered drug, now named lodamin, went straight to tumor cells and helped suppress melanoma and lung cancer, with no apparent side effects, Benny said.

they don't say if the drug still affects the brain or not. but.. if it kills the cancer, I'm sure the euphoria of being cured will probably offset the side effect of depression.

I wonder if they will look at this method of delivery for other cancer fighting substances that have a hard time getting past the digestive system, like curcumin.

[nightowl]

I realized my mistake shortly after I posted it. When they first wrote about the drug they used a small " l " instead of an L then later capitalized it so iodamin looked a lot llike iodoral in my screwed up thinking. Meanwhile, I was getting very ill from maxing out on MMS and spent the entire day in bed so it took me a while to get back to you...Sorry! Besides, my daughter miscarried last night and her blood pressure went dangerously low 3 times, especially scarey since her faith doesn't allow blood transfusions. They do have other replacements, I know, but I think she had all of that they could allow too. Anyhow, the world is righting itself and all is better now.

Here is another article my brother sent to me today. I haven't had time to read it, but it explains Lodamin in more detail, I believe.

http://news.yahoo.com:80/nphotos/act...nanoparticles/

nightowl

[nightowl]

The link I posted above is the third one I've tried this morning that has "expired" or been removed.

***I am editing this post because I realized that the diappearing links may be due to Yahoo applications that I deleted the other day on my computer. Here is a new link from Reuters to replace the first Yahoo one at the beginning of this thread. There seems to be no way for me to edit it there. Now we can see how long it takes for this one to disappear.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...36154720080630