Accidental fungus leads to promising cancer drug

Source: Reuters

A drug developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

The drug, called lodamin, was improved in one of the last experiments overseen by Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher who died in January. Folkman pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy -- starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies.

Lodamin is an angiogenesis inhibitor that Folkman's team has been working to perfect for 20 years. Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, his colleagues say they developed a formulation that works as a pill, without side-effects...

SNIP

...Tests in mice showed it worked against a range of tumors, including breast cancer, neuroblastoma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors known as glioblastomas and uterine tumors...

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080629/ts_nm/cancer_nanoparticles_dc

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I knew Dr. Judah Folkman and spoke to him when a good friend of mine was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor. Judah and my friend have since both passed away. I always thought my friend would beat the odds, and I always thought Judah Folkman would someday win a Nobel Prize for Medicine. Neither occured. This would be a wonderful thing if this drug is as promising as it looks. I am smiling, while feeling very sad.

...a NOVA program back in the early 90s about Dr. Folkman and his research. Back then, he was hoping that certain heart drugs called statins might be the way to starve cancerous tumors. This is absolutely wonderful news. When I first read the article, I couldn't help thinking, that this stuff shrinks gliomas!!! And that's exactly what Ted Kennedy needs!!!

- And even better, the drug isn't owned by BIG PHARMA....

K&R!!!

My bosses wife has been battling cancer for a long time and I forwarded the story to him.

Much appreciated!

I've lost too many relatives to cancer, untimely.

Now, on the lighter side, "Accidental Fungus" would be a great name for a band.

for lung cancer because you might "get fungus". Wouldn't it be ironic if this is why a major study shows that pot smokers don't get lung cancer?

as I recently read somewhere that smoking pot was found to reduce the incidence of lung cancer amongst smokers.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm

and I know from experience working in biological labs at the academic level. Culture contamination occurs quite often in cell culture experiments. Normally rough preventative steps are taken (e.g. spraying the working hood and your gloves with ethanol, which kills most bacteria), but the working conditions are nowhere near what it is for something like silicon chip formation (where workers where the full bunny suits in a completely sterile environment). While the contamination might not have been intended, a lot of work goes into using that sample to perform tests.

Quite frankly, I find it annoying that scientists are falling in love with the idea of explaining initial discoveries as 'dumb luck' to try to engender favorable media coverage of their lab.

was discovered as mold on a cantaloupe.
I'm afraid I have forgotten the doctor's name, but he tested the fungus, out of curiosity.
The doctor later said that it was the strongest strain of penicillin he ever grew, was from that moldy cantaloupe.

discovered the bacteria-killing properties of the fungus Penicillium notatum by accident in 1928, when it contaminated one of his bactera cultures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming

Interestingly, P. notatum is the grey fungus that grows on mouldy bread, and the ancient Egyptians had known back in the Middle Kingdom that a poultice of mouldy bread helped wounds to heal cleanly -- without infection, as we now say. But I think (I'm writing from memory) that the relevant papyri weren't dicovered and translated until the late 1940s.

because there is more money to be made in the treatment than the cure?

The net has made it a nightmare for companies trying to hide tech because it is exposed before they even know about it. Meaning little net profit to be made with more risk.

Well, all things are possible. However, with a common and often-fatal disease like cancer, it's likely that pharma companies would make MORE money from cancer cures: both directly and because of the good publicity it would give them. Also, people who are cured of cancer and other diseases live to become the elderly, who spend more money on medicines than any other age group!

What IS more of a danger is that the companies would sell the drugs at prices unaffordable to people who aren't rich and don't live in a country prepared to spend money on health care. Thus increasing the health gap between rich and poor countries even further.

The trouble with pharma companies isn't that they suppress cures or make or keep people sick. It's that they help the rich, or those in countries with good national health care, to stay and become well, while often not giving the same opportunities to people in poor countries.

P

We would have had a genuine case of

promising cures come from the least likely sources. If Vincristine, a drug used effectively against some leukemias, can come from the periwinkle plant, why is it hard to believe that a fungus could be the source of the "magic bullet"? Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times following testicular cancer and Sheryl Crow is still "hot" and rockin' after breast cancer. I have watched family and friends die from cancer and always wondered if "their" cures, yet to be discovered, might have been growing in a petri dish in some lab.

"Dum Spiro, Spero" (while I breathe, I hope) -- one which I took as my own a long, long time ago. Cancer doesn't run in my family -- it full-on gallops. Both my parents and all their siblings but one had it. My mom is a long-term survivor, but she still recounts that the last thing she remembers before she went out for a 14-hour surgery is her doctor said "you could wake up with one bag or two; we don't yet know." Both my parents were in hospital at the same time 14 years ago for cancer, four states apart. Mom made it; dad didn't. The ax has whooshed all around me, so I have a special appreciation and admiration for the bravery and tenacity of survivors.

To hear that we're even one inch closer to a cure is great cause for joy, AFAIC.

Edit: "breathe", take a "breath"... spelling, James William!

Merck spent a BILLION dollars a year in advertising a pain medication that worked worse than the drug it wanted to replace, and still made a BILLION dollars a year in net profits, until VIOXX was taken off the market as being too deadly and dangerous.

GD Searle spends 3 BILLION dollars a year reverse engineering existing drugs so it can either re-patent its existing line, get new patents on replacement drugs, (where its patents are expiring), or so they can steal a drug, reformulate it from others after their patents expire.

Both companies spend 3-10 times as much (depending on how you measure it) on advertising than they do on research and development.

AND A BLOODY FUNGUS, a mistake, an error, gives them a cancer cure?

please explain to me yet again why the FDA and the federal government seek to ban all medical devices products liability litigation, please.

snip

Lodamin is an angiogenesis inhibitor that Folkman's team has been working to perfect for 20 years
snip


I saw a a thread with a hyper link.....but I'm wondering if there is a link to this 20 yr research project and the one being distributed in Cuba ?

Is somebody nervous about patent infringements?

coincidence?

maybe not