Nanotechnology & Fungus Leads To Promising Cancer Drug
The US scientists have found that a drug called lodamin, can be used to treat cancer. The drug was invented by a cancer researcher Dr. Judah Folkman, who died early this year. The drug which was developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers. The inventor of the drug, Folkman pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy, starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies.
Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Folkman’s colleagues say they developed a formulation that works as a pill, without side-effects. They have licensed it to SynDevRx, Inc, a privately held Cambridge, Massachusetts biotechnology company that has recruited several prominent cancer experts to its board. Tests on mice so far have proved that the drug is effective against some fatal diseases like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors.
The drug was known experimentally as TNP-470, and was originally isolated from a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus fresenius. Donald Ingber had discovered the fungus by accident while trying to grow endothelial cells — the cells that line blood vessels.
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, researchers said.
Source: Reuters
Filed under Breast, Cancer, Health, Prostrate
