Friday, September 10, 2010

On the horizon: new treatments for wounds, cancer

Breakthroughs in medicine:

A multidisciplinary research group at UCLA has now teamed up to not only visualize a virus but to use the results to adapt the virus so that it can deliver medication instead of disease. The work provides critical structural information for researchers around the world attempting to modify the adenovirus for use in vaccine and gene-therapy treatments for cancer.

A gene therapy in the form of a thick gel is about to revolutionize wound treatment. The gel is called Nexagon, and when you apply it to a wound, it reprograms the cells to heal more quickly and efficiently.

Since last April, 19 cancer patients whose liver tumors hadn’t responded to chemotherapy have taken an experimental drug. Within weeks of the first dose, it appeared to work, by preventing tumors from making proteins they need to survive. The results are preliminary yet encouraging. With a slight redesign, the drug might work for hundreds of diseases, fulfilling the promise that wonder cures like stem cells and gene therapy have failed to deliver.

 Choking a Tumor MRI scans show that blood flow [red] decreases in liver tumors 
after ALN-VSP therapy, which stops cancer cells from making proteins that form blood vessels.

If a drug can be guided to the right place in the body, the treatment is more effective and there are fewer side-effects. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have now developed magnetic nanoparticles that can be directed to metallic implants such as artificial knee joints, hip joints and stents in the coronary arteries.

Scientists today reported that frog skin contains natural substances that could be the basis for a powerful new genre of antibiotics.

Corneas made in the lab using genetically engineered human collagen could restore sight to millions of visually impaired people waiting for transplants from human donors, researchers say.

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