Posted on 07/15/2022 11:08:28 AM PDT by Red Badger
A drug under investigation as a cancer treatment has shown exciting promise in a rather different branch of medical research, with scientists demonstrating how it can promote nerve repair following spinal injury. The breakthrough shows how the drug acts on a DNA damage response mechanism at play in both these unrelated conditions, and triggers a "remarkable" recovery in mice with injured spinal cords.
Led by scientists at the University of Birmingham, the research focused on an experimental drug called AZD1390. This drug is under investigation as a cancer therapy due its potential to make tumor cells more sensitive to radiation treatment. It does so by penetrating the brain and inhibiting a mechanism linked to DNA damage, called the ATM protein kinase pathway.
This is implicated in what the authors call the DNA Damage Response system, which swings into action in response to DNA damage caused by several common cancers, and also in response to spinal cord injury. The authors of the new study hypothesize that the activation of this system may slow or prevent recovery from spinal cord injury, by hampering nerve repair. The thinking was that by using AZD1390 to inhibit the ATM signaling pathway, they could clear the way for the growth of new nerve cells.
To begin with, the experiments centered on nerve cells in culture. AZD1390 was found to stimulate new growth in this environment and inhibit the ATM protein kinase pathway. In mice with spinal cord injuries, oral administration of AZD1390 was also shown to significantly suppress the pathway. Further, it promoted nerve regeneration beyond the site of the injury, and enhanced the capacity of these nerves to relay electrical signals. The restoration of sensory and motor function was "dramatic," the team writes in the research paper.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
Cancer drugs are sooooooo expensive. My wife has 50 treatments of chemo, each cost around $30,000. And she had 40 treatments of Keytruda, just as expensive. Thanks to Medicare advantage, she only has to pay out of pocket maximum each year which is now at $4400.
Why are they using such costly meds on Mice?
Because lab mice are the main beneficiaries of these constant "breakthroughs"-- Well, them and the scientists who get more grant money. The rest of us never see it.
I’ve seen this same old story so many, many times before, and then never to be heard from again. How many “breakthroughs”, and “one-step closers” are necessary before we finally reach our destination? There have been thousands. While millions suffer and die, and their families, devastated.
And the constant media announcements during all those years of a new “major” breakthrough are always the same...”We hope” this new breakthrough discovery “may” “someday” “lead to” “possible” “future research” that “may” “one day” “open up the possibility” of new drugs “that may someday” be used as a “possible” treatment....etc. Or that human trials “may” begin in “5 or 10 years”. “This is just the very early stages” And, “much more research is needed”.....To keep the money grants flowing in.
And then we NEVER hear about it again!
They’re all the same, like a script. In the meantime decades pass and millions suffer and die.
It seems Big Pharma has it all covered to protect their profits. Whenever a real non-Chemo cure comes along, they are shut down permanently. Like the John Kanzius Cancer Machine that used no Chemo or Radiation, but rather gold nano-shells and radio waves to heat them and destroy cancer cells anywhere in the body. With a near 100% cure rate of Pancreatic Cancers in pigs. While all the nano-shells were eliminated from the body within 2 weeks. They raised over $10,000,000 in fund raisers to get it to human trials. Then just before the Human Trials were to begin, a ‘newly formed’ company bought out the rights, canceled the Human Trials, took possession of the machines and has refuse to answer any and all inquiries ever since.
Excerpts from an article representing Big Pharma that I found in the WSJ back in 2006 when I had lost my mother, uncle, pet Leonberger, and brother (in that order) to cancer within a 3 year period (In 2017 I was diagnosed with cancer). It shows in blatant form the total disregard for the cancer patient, and the giddy excitement at the prospects of greater future profits.
Cancer Drug Pipeline On The Rise
UPI ^ | July 12, 2006 | STEVE MITCHELL
Katie Siafaca, spokeswoman for New Medicine, a representative of the Big Phama Drug Industry said:
“They did not go after cancer in the old days because it didn’t seem like a place where you could make a lot of money,” she said.
“But that has changed because cancer drugs can now be very expensive, with some costing tens of thousands of dollars per patient, and many patients will receive multiple drugs during the course of their disease.”
“The use of second- and third-line therapies “has made chemotherapy a very big business because one patient may have three or four different treatments before they expire,” Siafaca said.”
“In addition, a lower rate of efficacy and a higher rate of side effects can often be acceptable in this arena, particularly in advanced cancer patients with no other options. “A lot of drugs all they do is extend life by several months but you can still make money off it,” she said.”
With all the major scientific breakthroughs in cancer research that point to new treatments in the “near future”, it’s nice to know that the drug companies are working hard not to find cures to save lives and stop the suffering, but to come up with very expensive low-efficacy “treatments” to get as much money as possible out of cancer patients “before they expire”.
I remember in the early 1960s the American Cancer Society had a fundraising ad that showed a clock at 5 minutes to midnight with the subtitle “We’re this close to a cure!” That was 60 years ago! I also remember listening to an old time Radio Show broadcast from the 1930s, where in a famous Hollywood Actress did a commercial for the Lupus Foundation. She ended it with the line, “Lupus, it’s time for a cure.” That was almost 90 years ago, and still no cure.
If the last two years of corruption and lies have taught us anything, it’s we can’t trust Big Pharma or the FDA, and Big Government, that is in their pocket.
This gimp welcomes the news, but sad to say, after 8 years post-SCI, the scar tissue surrounding my T12 break makes it unlikely that any regeneration would reconnect, or so I’m told by my Neurologist.
Wonder how it works on dementia damaged brain cells?
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