Ref : http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2009-rst/5272.html
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Pazopanib for aggressive thyroid cancer.
Ref : http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2009-rst/5272.html
Glutamine for stomach ulcer ?
Dietary sources of L-glutamine include beef, chicken, fish, eggs, milk, dairy products, wheat, cabbage, beets, beans, spinach, and parsley. Small amounts of free L-glutamine are also found in vegetable juices and fermented foods, such as miso.
In one of my earlier blog, I did mention that broccoli, has been found useful against the H. pylori infection, now its the turn of Glutamine-that has been found useful against the infection. Dr. Susan Hagen, Associate Director of Research in the Department of Surgery at BIDMC and Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and group has found that extra glutamine in the diet could protect against gastric damage caused by H. pylori.
Gastric damage develops when the bacteria weakens the stomach's protective mucous coating, damages cells and elicits a robust immune response that is ineffective at ridding the infection. Eventually, she notes, years of infection result in a combination of persistent gastritis, cell damage and an environment conducive to cancer development. Dr. Hagen and her co-authors had previously shown that glutamine protects against cell death from H. pylori-produced ammonia. And further studies revealed that, the damaging effects of ammonia on gastric cells could be reversed completely by the administration of L-glutamine," explains Hagen. "The amino acid stimulated ammonia detoxification in the stomach - as it does in the liver - so that the effective concentration of ammonia was reduced, thereby blocking cell damage', which encouraged the group to hypothesize that a similar mechanism might be at work in the intact stomach infected with H. pylori.
Congrats Dr. Susuan and group. ....
Ref : http://www.bidmc.org/News/InResearch/2009/May/StomachUlcers.aspx
Friday, June 5, 2009
Antiinflammatory activity of H2S gas !
They discovered that when H2S is delivered in a slow and sustained manner, a potent anti-inflammatory effect is produced. Cell signalling molecules that drive inflammation, such as TNFα, IL-1, IL-6 and prostaglandins, were reduced while levels of the body's own anti-inflammatory molecules (i.e. IL-10) were increased. We know the side effects of NSAIds and even the so called nonulcerogenic NSAIds have side effects (except for those with selectice inhibitors of 5-LO and CO), most of them have side effects. Hope the outcome of this research will lead to compounds which can overcome the side effects. Thus generating H2S in a controlled and sustained manner offers the potential for the development of a new group of anti-inflammatory drugs or lead to the modification of existing drugs so they also release H2S and hopefully come with less gastrointestinal side-effects.
Hope, using H2S donating molecules to control H2S delivery in the body could pave the way for the development of novel approaches to the treatment of inflammatory disorders. Congrats Dr. Matt Whiteman and his group for this interesting finding...
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Mechanism of Antibiotic Resistance Explained !
This new study, experimentally and theoretically explained how the inhibition of these drug efflux pumps can completely mask the resistance effect of mutations that reduce the affinity of antibiotics to their target molecules in the bacteria cell. The effect of the mutations is entirely hidden when the pumps are unable to remove the antibiotic sufficiently quickly in relation to the dilution of the antibiotic through cell growth and cell division.
A new way for drug discovery....
Ref : http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/04/30/0811514106.abstract?sid=4175ffe7-b04b-4fc3-9270-af9a9bd5d953
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Auranofin an arthritis drug as new antibiotic?
Infections of Clostridium difficile (C-diff) lead to a wide range of illnesses ranging from severe diarrhea to colitis, which can cause death. It's a life-threatening problem in hospitals and nursing homes worldwide, and the number of cases is on the rise. There are an estimated 500,000 cases per year in the US alone. Between 15,000 to 20,000 people die each year while infected with this superbug. Treponema denticola is one of leading causes of gum disease and costs individuals thousands of dollars in dental care each year.
Ref :http://www.springerlink.com/content/g6725k414863446q/?p=1f9d7cac7a4e4867af336327382c16bd&pi=4
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Aerosol delivery of antibiotics via nanoparticles !
Treatment with antibiotic-laden nanoparticles effectively eliminated respiratory infections in mice that had been inoculated with Pseudomona aeroginosa, a common bacterial species that often infects the respiratory tract in humans, particularly immunocompromised patients, ventilated patients or those with cystic fibrosis. Infected mice that inhaled aerosolized nanoparticles encapsulating silver carbene complexes (SCCs), a novel class of silver-based antimicrobials with broad-spectrum activity, showed a significant survival advantage over the control mice that received nanoparticles without the SCCs. The results are really interesting and even the half the dose is sufficient. Toxicity results are still to be done, however this is a good beginning and hope they will come up with interesting results in the near future...
Ref :http://www.thoracic.org/sections/publications/press-releases/conference/articles/2009/abstracts-and-press-releases/cannon.pdf
Monday, May 25, 2009
Tuberculosis can evade immune response !
The immune cells responsible for killing the tuberculosis bacteria surrounded the granuloma, these cells had low levels of the molecules necessary to kill the TB. Instead, granulomas had high numbers of regulatory immune cells. These regulatory cells suppress the immune response, resulting in the survival of the tuberculosis bacteria and perhaps contributing to persistent long-term infection. Compartmentalization of the immune response in human TB could be part of the reason why infection is never completely eradicated but instead develops into a chronic disease. Congrats for the interesting findings and wish them further success in their future research...
Sunday, May 24, 2009
New Vaccine for TB...!
Ref : http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2009/090423.html
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Ginseng as antiinflammatory medicine?
Ref : http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/pdf/1479-5876-7-34.pdf
LXR Proteins- New target for antitubercular activity?
In the study, when compared with normal mice, mice lacking both forms of LXR (LXR-alpha and LXR-beta) were more susceptible to airway infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and developed more severe disease. Further analysis revealed that these mice did not mount an effective immune response in the airways. There was no accumulation of immune cells (neutrophils) in the lungs and little evidence of Th1 and Th17 immune responses. Importantly, the marked protection from infection seen in normal mice treated with molecules that target LXRs was accompanied by increased Th1 and Th17 immune responses.
Congrats Kris for this achievement. More...
Sunday, May 10, 2009
RNA interference approach for prevention and treatment of STDs ?
In my earlier blog “Diverse use of Nucleic acids”, did mention that there is much interest in the medical uses of nucleic acids. For example, antisense, ribozymes, aptamer and RNA interference (RNAi) technologies are all being developed for potential therapeutic applications. Lots of research is being done in each specified fields and in fact there are already few drugs in “antisense category” and this time something really interesting has been reported by a Post Doc., Dr. Kim Woodrow in the field of RNA interference category. The following lines briefly summerise, what actually RNAis..
The RNAi pathway is found in many eukaryotes including animals and is initiated by the enzyme Dicer, which cleaves long double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules into short fragments of ~20 nucleotides. One of the two strands of each fragment, known as the guide strand, is then incorporated into the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). The most well-studied outcome is post-transcriptional gene silencing, which occurs when the guide strand base pairs with a complementary sequence of a messenger RNA molecule and induces cleavage by Argonaute, the catalytic component of the RISC complex. This process is known to spread systemically throughout the organism despite initially limited molar concentrations of siRNA. The importance of the siRNA lies in the fact that “RNAi is selective on gene expression” and hence can be used in the similar fashion like the antisense drugs (already a few drugs by ISIS, Serono and others). I did work on a few oligonucleotides (phosparothiamidates), while working in Innovasynth Technologies Limited Khopoli and know how difficult is to get the precursors of the antisense drugs. In 2006, Andrew Fire and Craig C. Mello shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on RNA interference in the nematode worm C. elegans.
Gene interference therapy is moving rapidly from basic research to application. The PLGA packaging these researchers chose is already approved as safe and non-toxic by the FDA, speeding the path to clinical trials for infectious agents such as HPV and HIV.
Congrats Dr.Kim and co workers for this achievement. The significance of this research is the fact that “a safe and effective administration of potential antiviral drugs - small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules using densely-loaded nanoparticles made of a biodegradable polymer known as PLGA. The researchers created a stable "time release" vehicle for delivery of siRNAs to sensitive mucosal tissue like that of the female reproductive system.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
FDA's approval of Iloperidone for schizophrenia....
Iloperidone
Ref :http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2009/NEW02009.html
Safinamide for advanced Parkinson's disease.!
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Explanation for the side effect of COX-2 inhibitors !....
Ref: http://news.med.cornell.edu/wcmc/wcmc_2009/04_29_09.shtml
A best way to deal with flu pandemic......
The concern is that if such a strain were to spread widely, the effectiveness of antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu in treating infected patients, as well as their ability to slow the spread of a pandemic, would be greatly reduced. A research group lead by Joseph Wu (University of Hong Kong), claims that they have developed a mathematical model to arrive at a conclusion. The team found that treating just the first 1% of the population in a local epidemic with a secondary drug, rather than with oseltamivir, could substantially delay the development of resistance to oseltamivir and this reduction in resistance was predicted to benefit not only local populations, but also those in distant parts of the world where the pandemic would subsequently spread through air travel and more interesting out come of the research is "in the current emerging swine flu situation, the secondary drug could be Relenza (zanamivir), the only other approved drug to which the new H1N1 strain has been found to be susceptible". This strategy say the researchers could be as effective because it delays use of the primary stockpiled drug until a certain proportion of the local population (about 1.5% according to the model) has been infected with virus that remains susceptible to the primary drug - with drug-sensitive virus in the majority as people recover from infection and develop immunity, only a minority of further infections are likely to be resistant to the primary drug.