A New Drug For Cancer?
Feb 5, 2007, 9:42a - Health and Medicine
I just got back from interviews at Johns Hopkins Neuroscience yesterday, which is why I didn't hit my promise-to-post-on-Thursday for the third straight week :( But hopefully this news will make up for it.
According to an article in New Scientist, researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered that a drug called dichloroacetate (DCA) may be used to ... more »
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Ken Dev
- Feb 6, 2007, 3:20a
As a cancer researcher in the US, I was very interested in the report. I wrote to the researchers quite sometime ago asking for a copy of any published paper. I also suggested that India may be a good country to run the clinical trials with DCA, since it would cost a fraction of what it would be to run the same trial in Canada or the US.
nikhil
- Feb 6, 2007, 9:25a
Hey Ken,
Thanks for the comment. I poked around a bit, and found these 2 publications:
1) WIPO patent "A Method Of Treating Cancer Using Dichloroacetate" (36 pages) - http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/ia.jsp?IA=CA2006/000548
2) "Spatio-Temporal Diversity of Apoptosis Within the Vascular Wall in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH)" - http://circres.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/98/2/172 - Apparently PAH and cancer are related
So there is a patent for this treatment, though I'm not sure if it's actually been granted or is still in the application process. I suspect that since it's owned by the University of Alberta and Canada has a strong bias toward super-cheap drugs, they won't require the patent to be licensed for manufacture and sale of the drug.
Ken Dev
- Apr 1, 2007, 10:51p
I am sorry-- I picked up your comments only today. Thanks for the refs. I am getting the pdf version of the paper which appeared in Cancer Cell. Unless I look at the patent-- hopefully, I can access it-- I wouldn't know what is new. I thought DCA has been around for a long time. I also read about the two blogs that have been set up [Details in Nature Blog]. It looks like people, who are desperate and are terminal, are buying it, although it has not been tested in humans. It has been approved for use in animals. From what little I read, it seems that it is producing some numbness etc. and apprently it could be because of impurity. Well, even taxol gives numbness! If this very cheap drug can give an extra year or two, it is worth it. India has some world class synthetic chemists and I am sure they can produce it cheaply and scale it up.
Eli Lilly: Strike 2
Dec 21, 2006, 10:42a - Health and Medicine
2 years ago, I reported that Eli Lilly nearly succeeded in buying a court verdict in a case where a patient on Prozac (an Eli Lilly drug) shot and killed 9 people, including himself. They also allegedly witheld information about Prozac's side effects, including increased aggression, from the FDA. They were later cleared of this second charge, but things ... more »
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Daniel Haszard
- Dec 27, 2006, 1:05p
At a glance,zyprexa was promoted 'off label' to uses that weren't FDA approved.This opens up a can of worms for patients like myself took it for PTSD for which it was ineffective and moreover gave me diabetes.
True,leaked documents don't convey the 'whole picture' but what is compelling is that zyprexa is the 7th some say 5th largest drug sell in the world and Eli Lilly's #1 drug sale by their own admission.
This is for a drug that won't get you "high" cost $2.50 a pill and only indicated for less than 1% of the population.
Hello! Somebody in Lilly land is pushing zyprexa hard-Daniel Haszard
Stool Sampler
Mar 31, 2006, 8:24a - Health and Medicine
Since I'm on the topic of health, I can think of no better time than to to tell this story. I related some of it to Aki, and he inspired me to post it on my blog.
Several weeks ago, I decided to visit my doctor because I was worried that I had some sort of bacteria or parasite in ... more »
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Roy
- Mar 31, 2006, 9:49a
Thanks for the amusing story.
Mental note: In the future, will not read Nik's blog right after lunch.
I interned a long time ago at BD, a company that actually makes that sort of product. Never personally worked on stool though, I worked solely on blood collection.
Aki
- Mar 31, 2006, 8:06p
Best quote - "Shit."
omar
- Apr 4, 2006, 8:28a
your blog is going out of my web clips! this is disgusting!
you know, you could've just shat on some newspaper or something, and tossed it afterwards, no? this whole playing catch sounds ridiculous!
garry
- Apr 9, 2006, 6:06p
ROTFL
nikhil
- Nov 27, 2006, 2:54a
shitting on a newspaper would have contaminated the shit...
Arkie
- Nov 28, 2007, 9:30p
Well, I am going to have to provide a sample of "poop" to my doc and I found your story on line via a web search of "how to do it!" Very amusing, but I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do tomorrow morning when I try to collect my sample. I think the idea of having a Stanford senior work on this project sounds great. Can the senior student email me his solution before tomorrow morning?
Liz
- Mar 13, 2010, 6:44p
Lol!!!
Let's Work to Improve Global Health
Mar 28, 2006, 9:00a - Health and Medicine
Here are some things I think we must fund to improve global health care:
1) Poor country disease eradication
Many diseases, such as malaria (which kills 1M/year), don't get the attention or funding that they deserve. Some drugs that would only benefit poorer countries aren't developed because there isn't enough money to be made to be worth the effort. Beyond ... more »
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Multiple Sclerosis
Sep 7, 2005, 11:11p - Health and Medicine
My cousin was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis last year. Multiple sclerosis is a debilitating disease that slowly destroys the nervous system and can eventually lead to loss of motor control, among other disabilities. Fortunately, my cousin was diagnosed early in the disease but unfortunately, there isn't a cure.
My aunt has formed a team to walk in a walk-a-thon to ... more »
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CHEC
May 1, 2005, 8:54p - Health and Medicine
My mom finally launched a website for her work, available at chec.healthcare.ucla.edu.
She works at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, in the Center for Humane and Ethical Medical Care (CHEC). Dr. Arthur Rivin founded CHEC, which is a non-profit, several years ago. One of the goals of CHEC is to educate the public on medicine, ethics and human values. Dr. ... more »
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