Pfizer seeks FDA support for its new anti-rheumatoid arthritis pill

In continuation of my update on Tofacitinib

Pfizer seeks FDA support for its new anti-rheumatoid arthritis pill: Pfizer is waiting for the Food and Drug Administration to approve its new pill for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) - the first oral biologic for treating this ailment.

Botanical formula inhibits breast to lung cancer metastasis in mice

Botanical formula inhibits breast to lung cancer metastasis in mice: Scientists at Indiana University Health's Cancer Research Laboratory have found that a sophisticated botanical formula slows human breast cancer growth and inhibits breast to lung metastasis in mice. The formula contains extracts from medicinal mushrooms (Coriolus versicolor, Ganoderma lucidum and Phellinus linteus), medicinal herbs (Scutellaria barbata, Astragalus membranaceus and Curcuma longa) and purified nutritional compounds, and showed no toxic side-effects.

Truvada deemed safe & effective in HIV infection risk reduction

Gilead Sciences Inc's Truvada pills are deemed  safe  and  effective  for  reducing the risk of HIV infection, U.S. regulators said on Tuesday. But they recommended a cautious approach for using the drug in efforts to prevent the virus that causes AIDS.

According to the Food and Drug Administration Truvada - a combination of Gilead's HIV drugs Emtriva (also known as emtricitabine see above structure), and Viread (or tenofovir see below left structure), which is already being used by patients with the human immunodeficiency virus, is well (left structure is that of  Tenofovir disoproxil fumarate)   tolerated overall by uninfected people and may prevent infection in high-risk individuals when used in combination with other strategies. The FDA acknowledged a strong correlation between the drug's efficacy at reducing HIV infection and the willingness of those taking it to adhere to the treatment.

Researchers speculated that women may require a higher dose of the drug to prevent infection. They also said the disappointing results may have resulted from women not taking the pills consistently. 

“We know that if the person doesn't take the medication every day they will not be protected,” said Dr. Rodney Wright, director of HIV programs at Montefiore Medical Center in New York and chairman of the AIDS Health Foundation. “So the concern is that there may not be adequate adherence to provide protection in the general population.” (right structure is Emtricitabine).

An outside panel of experts is scheduled to examine the FDA review documents on Thursday and make recommendations that U.S. health regulators will consider in deciding whether the drug should be used as a preventive treatment. Some experts have warned that the drug is only partly effective against HIV and that using it to prevent infection could cause protection from the virus to falter if patients fail to adhere to treatment.

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Black pepper compound fights fat

We know the that, black pepper has many medicinal benefits, like  curing illness such as constipation, diarrhea, earache, gangrene, heart disease, hernia, hoarseness, indigestion, insect bites, insomnia, joint pain, liver problems, lung disease, oral abscesses, sunburn, tooth decay, and toothaches. Now Korean researchers report that piperine (see structure below), a pungent compound found in black pepper (Piper nigrum), helps block the formation of new fat cells, a process known as adipogenesis.

"Adipogenesis is a well-organized process regulated by adipogenic transcription factors, such as peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPAR-gamma), sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP) family, and CCAAT-enhancer binding protein (C/EBP) family," the authors write in their introduction. "Of these factors, PPAR-gamma has been focused on its role in adipocyte differentiation. In addition to being induced during adipogenesis, it is both necessary and sufficient for the process."

In addition to other benefits such as enhancing nutrient absorption in the digestive tract, black pepper has been found to reduce blood glucose and lipids. In the current study, Soo-Jong Um, Ji-Cheon Jeong and colleagues tested the effects of black pepper extract and piperine on cultured preadipocytes and found that both inhibited the cells differentiation into mature fat cells. Expression of the genes for PPAR-gamma, SREBP-1c and C/EBP-beta were all found to be decreased, as was the binding of PPAR-gamma to a coactivator known as CREB-binding protein following the administration of either treatment. Piperine was also shown to repress LXR-alpha, another transcriptional factor that is involved in the induction of adipogenesis as well as the synthesis of cholesterol and fatty acids.

"Taken together, our findings suggest that piperine, a major component of black pepper, inhibits fat cell differentiation by down-regulating the transcriptional activity of PPAR-gamma (and LXR-alpha) and suppressing the expression of PPAR-gamma (and LXR-alpha), thus leading to its potential use in the treatment of obesity-related diseases," the authors conclude.

Ref : http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf204514a?prevSearch=%255BContrib%253A%2BSoo-Jong%2BUm%255D&searchHistoryKey=

Grape compound may block the formation of fat cells

Purdue University researchers have come up with the ability of a compound known as piceatannol (see structure)  to help prevent the formation of mature fat cells by blocking the pathways needed for their growth. Piceatannol is an analog of resveratrol, found in grapes and other fruit, which is converted to piceatannol in humans following its consumption.

Purdue assistant professor of food science Kee-Hong Kim and his associates tested piceatannol in cultured preadipocytes, which are immature fat cells. These cells pass through several stages before reaching maturity over a ten day or longer period. "These precursor cells, even though they have not accumulated lipids, have the potential to become fat cells," Dr Kim explained. "We consider that adipogenesis is an important molecular target to delay or prevent fat cell accumulation and, hopefully, body fat mass gain."

Dr Kim's team found that piceatannol bound to the preadipocytes' insulin receptors during their initial stage of fat cell formation, which blocked insulin's ability to control cell cycles and activate genes necessary for the further stages of adipogenesis. "Piceatannol actually alters the timing of gene expressions, gene functions and insulin action during adipogenesis, the process in which early stage fat cells become mature fat cells," Dr Kim stated. "In the presence of piceatannol, you can see delay or complete inhibition of adipogenesis."

"Our study reveals an antiadipogenic function of piceatannol and highlights insulin receptor and its downstream insulin signaling as novel targets for piceatannol in the early phase of adipogenesis," the authors conclude.

Dr Kim hopes to test piceatannol in an animal model as well as find a way to prevent the compound from degrading so that enough is available to the body to prevent fat gain. "We need to work on improving the stability and solubility of piceatannol to create a biological effect," he added.

Ref : http://www.jbc.org/content/287/14/11566.abstract?sid=48fa8a22-7a4d-4561-9585-80d643245a89

Isis Initiates Phase 1 Study in Patients With Cancer With the First Generation 2.5 Antisense Drug, ISIS-STAT3Rx

 In continuation of my update on antisense drugs...

Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.  announced the initiation of a Phase 1 study of ISIS-STAT3Rx, a Generation 2.5 antisense drug designed to treat cancer.  ISIS-STAT3Rx specifically reduces the production of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3). Because STAT3 is over expressed in numerous types of cancers, ISIS-STAT3Rx has the potential to be broadly useful for both solid and liquid tumors.  The ISIS-STAT3Rx development plan is initially focused on key cancers where there is a high unmet medical need and a strong link to STAT3, such as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and ovarian cancer.  Advancements in Isis' technology platform have resulted in the improved potency of Generation 2.5 antisense drugs creating opportunities for drugs like ISIS-STAT3Rx to be effective in the more difficult to treat types of cancer. 

 

"The role of STAT3 as a key factor critical for tumor cell growth and survival of cancer cells has made STAT3 widely viewed as an important target of interest," said David S. Hong, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.  "STAT3 is a well understood transcription factor involved in multiple survival mechanisms that intersect with the growth, metastasis and invasiveness of cancer. The ability to selectively inhibit STAT3 could allow us to effectively treat some of the most difficult to treat cancers."

 
Isis Initiates Phase 1 Study in Patients With Cancer With the First Generation 2.5 Antisense Drug, ISIS-STAT3Rx

Ref : http://ir.isispharm.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=222170&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1691711&highlight=

Two-Drug Therapy Helped Kids With Type 2 Diabetes

Two-Drug Therapy Helped Kids With Type 2 Diabetes:  Children with type 2 diabetes may achieve better blood sugar control with a combination of two drugs, metformin and Avandia, than with metformin alone, a new study suggests. However, Avandia (rosiglitazone) was recently linked...

Scientists Spot How Cox-2 Painkillers Raise Heart Risks

In continuation of my update on COX-II inhibitors....

New research has uncovered how some cox-2 painkillers increase the risk for both heart attacks and stroke. The once popular cox-2 drugs, Vioxx and Bextra, were pulled off the market in 2004 and 2005, respectively, after research showed that both raised the chances of cardiovascular trouble. Meanwhile, Celebrex, a painkiller in the same drug class that remains on the market, carries a "black box" warning alerting patients to potential heart risks.

Now, a team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia say that, although cox-2 inhibitors are very good at inhibiting the workings of the cox-2 enzyme -- and thereby easing pain -- they also throw off the cardiovascular system's delicate balance by inhibiting an enzyme that relaxes blood vessels and guards against clotting.

"It's really about a rock and a hard place," said Dr. Christopher Cannon, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "There's a balance in the bloodstream of clotting and vasoconstriction, as well as protection against clotting and vasodilation, which means that there's a constant balance of clotting and preventing clotting, and constricting arteries and dilating arteries."

"But with cox-2 inhibitors, they have found that you knock the protective side of that balance off," Cannon said. "And then you're left only with the constrictive part, which means the drugs up the risk for clotting and arterial constriction."

"This problem is bigger than just Vioxx, which no longer exists," he added. "It applies to every single NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug), because with all NSAIDs -- including Celebrex and ibuprofen, which zillions of people take -- the same issue exists. You block out the good stuff and leave the bad stuff unchecked. The one exception is Naproxen, which has an anti-platelet effect that seems to work against stroke and heart attack risk."

"Sometimes you have to take a cox-2 because you have really bad daily pain," said Cannon. "But this is a dose-dependent problem, with the more cox-2 you take the greater the cardiovascular risk. So you have to limit the dose and take the least amount you can get away with, so you can try to control crippling pain but also try not to poison your blood vessels and predispose yourself to clotting and high blood pressure."

Ref : http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/4/132/132ra54.abstract?sid=25c1e6c3-e6ee-449c-ae09-b83f14efc9f2

Avastin not as beneficial to older lung cancer patients | Dana-Farber Ca...

In continuation of my update on Avastin

Beehive Extract Shows Potential as Prostate Cancer Treatment

 Caffeic acid phenethyl ester, or CAPE (see below structure), is a compound isolated from honeybee hive propolis, the resin used by bees to patch up holes in hives. Propolis has been used for centuries as a natural remedy for conditions ranging from sore throats and allergies to burns and cancer. But the compound has not gained acceptance in the clinic due to scientific questions about its effect on cells. 

In a paper published in Cancer Prevention Research, researchers combined traditional cancer research methods with cutting-edge proteomics to find that CAPE arrests early-stage prostate cancer by shutting down the tumor cells' system for detecting sources of nutrition.

"If you feed CAPE to mice daily, their tumors will stop growing. After several weeks, if you stop the treatment, the tumors will begin to grow again at their original pace," said Richard B. Jones, PhD, assistant professor in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research and Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology and senior author of the study. "So it doesn't kill the cancer, but it basically will indefinitely stop prostate cancer proliferation." 

Natural remedies isolated from plant and animal products are often marketed as cure-alls for a variety of maladies, usually based on vague antioxidant and anti-inflammatory claims. While substances such as ginseng or green tea have been occasionally tested in laboratories for their medicinal properties, scientific evidence is commonly lacking on the full biological effects of these over-the-counter compounds.

"It's only recently that people have examined the mechanism by which some of these herbal remedies work," Jones said. "Our knowledge about what these things are actually doing is a bit of a disconnected hodge-podge of tests and labs and conditions. In the end, you're left with a broad, disconnected story about what exactly these things are doing and whether or not they would be useful for treating disease."

To study the purported anti-cancer properties of CAPE, first author Chih-Pin Chuu (now at the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan) tested the compound on a series of cancer cell lines. Even at the low concentrations expected after oral administration, CAPE successfully slowed the proliferation of cultured cells isolated from human prostate tumors.

CAPE was also effective at slowing the growth of human prostate tumors grafted into mice. Six weeks of treatment with the compound decreased tumor volume growth rate by half, but when CAPE treatment was stopped, tumor growth resumed its prior rate. The results suggested that CAPE stopped cell division rather than killing cancerous cells.

To determine the cellular changes that mediated this effect, the researchers then used an innovative proteomics technique invented by Jones and colleagues called the "micro-western array." Western blots are a common laboratory tool used to measure the changes in protein levels and activity under different conditions. But whereas only one or a few proteins at a time can be monitored with Western blots, micro-western arrays allow researchers to survey hundreds of proteins at once from many samples.

Chuu, Jones and their colleagues ran micro-western arrays to assess the impact of CAPE treatment on the proteins of cellular pathways involved in cell growth -- experiments that would have been prohibitively expensive without the new technique.

"What this allowed us to do is screen about a hundred different proteins across a broad spectrum of signaling pathways that are associated with all sorts of different outcomes. You can pick up all the pathways that are affected and get a global landscape view, and that's never been possible before," Jones said. "It would have taken hundreds of Westerns, hundreds of technicians, and a very large amount of money for antibodies."

The micro-western array results allowed researchers to quickly build a new model of CAPE's cellular effects, significantly expanding on previous work that studied the compound's mechanisms. Treatment with CAPE at the concentrations that arrested cancer cell growth suppressed the activity of proteins in the p70S6 kinase and Akt pathways, which are important sensors of sufficient nutrition that can trigger cell proliferation.

"It appears that CAPE basically stops the ability of prostate cancer cells to sense that there's nutrition available," Jones said. "They stop all of the molecular signatures that would suggest that nutrition exists, and the cells no longer have that proliferative response to nutrition."

The ability of CAPE to freeze cancer cell proliferation could make it a promising co-treatment alongside chemotherapies intended to kill tumor cells. Jones cautioned that clinical trials would be necessary before CAPE could be proven effective and safe for this purpose in humans. But the CAPE experiments offer a precedent to unlock the biological mechanisms of other natural remedies as well, perhaps allowing these compounds to cross over to the clinic.

"A typical problem in bringing some of these herbal remedies into the clinic is that nobody knows how they act, nobody knows the mechanism, and therefore researchers are typically very hesitant to add them to any pharmaceutical treatment strategy," Jones said. "Now we'll actually be able to systematically demonstrate the parts of cell physiology that are affected by these compounds."

Ref : http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/5/5/788