Guest guest Posted July 25, 2012 Report Share Posted July 25, 2012 The people at s Hopkins have reported some success with a new drug called G-202. Here's a report from the Baltimore newspaper about it: http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/maryland-health/bs-hs-breakthrough-0722-20120\ 721,0,3107732.story Here's a brief explanation of it. It appears to be a chemotherapy drug (i.e., a drug that interferes with cell division), but it is in an inactive form until it comes in contact with a tumor cell. http://blog.mysciencework.com/en/2012/07/12/anti-cancer-%E2%80%9Chand-grenade%E2\ %80%9D-g202-in-clinical-trials.html There is a clinical trial in progress in three sites in the U.S., Baltimore, land, San , Texas, and Madison Wisconsin. It looks like all three sites are recruiting patients. This might be of interest to anyone who has failed hormone therapy and can make it to one of the sites. http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01056029?term=g202 & rank=1 Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 26, 2012 Report Share Posted July 26, 2012 Alan, The news article says. "It blocks the function of a protein that maintains tumor cells' calcium level, affecting both the tumors cells, blood vessels that feed them, and other cells nearby." Would a calcium channel blocker do the same thing? Doug Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 26, 2012 Report Share Posted July 26, 2012 dtc wrote: > The news article says. > > " It blocks the function of a protein that maintains tumor > cells' calcium level, affecting both the tumors cells, blood > vessels that feed them, and other cells nearby. " > > Would a calcium channel blocker do the same thing? Doug, I don't know the answer to that however I would guess, just from the fact that they are working on this drug, that well known calcium channel blockers aren't effective against cancer. If I had to guess, I would guess that G-202 is a very powerful calcium blocker that would kill you if it affected all cells. But they've designed the drug in a way that, supposedly, only affects, or mainly affects, tumor cells and the blood vessels near them. So instead of killing the patient, it would just kill the cancer. This problem also occurs with chemotherapy drugs. I have read that a well known medical oncologist claimed that chemotherapy can kill any cancer, the challenge is to deliver just enough chemo to kill the cancer without killing the patient - something that can't always be done. In the case of prostate cancer, apparently the dose required to completely kill the cancer would be fatal for the patient. One of the great developments of the last few years is " targeted " cancer therapies. The idea is to be able to deliver cancer killing drugs just to the cancer, not to the rest of the body. G-202 is one of those. I doubt if any of the targeted therapies currently in development are perfect. I presume that some of the drugs affect some healthy cells and kill them too. But they can be a lot more specific than most chemo drugs that indiscriminately slaughter all cells that are dividing - including hair follicles (which is why people lose hair on chemo) and stomach lining cells (which is why people get nauseous and throw up.) Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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