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Skin Cancer Drug Reverses Alzheimer's Symptoms In Mice
An anonymous reader writes "A skin cancer drug may rapidly reverse pathological, cognitive and memory deterioration associated with Alzheimer's disease, according to new research published on Thursday. Bexarotene, a drug that is currently used to combat T cell lymphoma, appeared to reverse plaque buildup and improve memory in the brains of mice with Alzheimer's disease by reducing levels of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain that cause mental deficits in Alzheimer's disease."
but I forgot what we were talking about
RTECS No: not available
Acute toxicity: oral toxicity (LD50): >1500 mg/kg (rat); >720 mg/kg (dog)
Dermal NOEL: 0.01% (rat)
Primary irritant effect:
On the skin: not known; may be an irritant; exposure may exacerbate the deleterious effects of sunlight
On the eye: not known; may be an irritant
Ingestion: may cause effects similar to hypervitaminosis A including headache, nausea, vomiting, lip inflammation, mucous membrane dryness, joint pain, scaly skin, and hyperlipidemia
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Yeah. I'd still take it.
and it had a 4-hour erection
Table-ized A.I.
Bonus!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yay! We may still see a lot of new Sir Terry Pratchett's books in the future! His pal, who speaks in caps, can wait for him a little longer, that's for sure.
This is one of those instances where I wonder if the drug repurposing is good or bad. The side effects seem to be typical, but as the article points out:
Experts said that the results were promising, but noted that in the past successful drugs in mice often failed to work in people.
So what I am trying to figure out is this an instance where Pfizer or someone else is backing the study. It looks like Easi isn't backing this but is someone else backing the work trying to keep a drug repurposed.
As I think about this I also wonder what happens to the plaque that is removed...so is it reabsorbed into the body?
Regardless, I think this is definately something useful and helpful if the human studies pan out.
Fingers crossed. The drug is pretty expensive but nursing homes are even more so... it will be huge if a bunch of people walk out of there.
http://thomsonreuters.com/content/science/pdf/ls/pharma_matters/movers_shakers-cwp-en_issue17.pdf shows the patent expiration as April 22, 2012, July 14, 2015, and October 5, 2016. I don't know what that means for an actual generic becoming available.
What will we do with super-intelligent mice?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Lots of outlets are publishing this, one of the more interesting ones was CNN's: http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/09/health/us-cancer-drug-alzheimers/index.html?hpt=he_c2
Check out the quote: "We've fixed Alzheimer's in mice lots of times, so we need to move forward expeditiously but cautiously."
So, would it be safe to say that Alzheimer's in mice is different from that in humans (on some level) so you might want to wait a bit before overdosing on Skin Cancer meds?
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's three years ago. It is simply brutal to see what this disease does to the people you love. But given the inevitable outcome of Alzheimer's, I'll grasp at any straw I can find if it presents some remote hope of a different outcome. This kind of perspective can't help but make one feel as if you're vulnerable to hucksters. There have been similar claims about more dubious Alzheimer's treatments, such as coconut oil, but when it comes down to it my approach is "Will it kill him or hurt him? If not, then let's try it, what have we got to lose."
The human testing and approval process for treating Alzheimer's with bexarotene will simply take too long to be of any benefit to him. I want to get a physician to approve this medication for the off-label use for my father, so we can try it on him.
I hope it is not reckless nor irresponsible to see if I can use my father as a sort of non-controlled subject for this study. But it seems that I have the choice between (1) risking a negative, possibly fatal or crippling, reaction for a remote chance at reversing a fatal, painful disease, or (2) waiting responsibly for the gears of formal human medical approval turn, test, find that this works, and approve prescribing it for patients. What kind of a choice is that?
Maybe somebody needs to connect the people who discovered this with the folks at the Taub Institute and Harvard as mentioned in this previous Slashdot article - "Alzheimer's Transmission Pathway Discovered". My grandfather (RIP), one of the smartest people I knew and loved dearly, suffered at the hands of Alzheimer's/dementia. I am not a scientist with enough knowledge to make a difference here, but I sure wish I could do something other than donate $$ to the researchers to help us win this battle. I'm just hoping with fingers crossed that the right people are connecting - there have been a lot of interesting discoveries - and that if the solution is found, it is made accessible and available.
Just a week ago, the Slashdot item Alzheimer's Transmission Pathway Discovered reported that Alzheimer was caused by the spread of the tau protein gone wrong. How is this to be interpretted in the view of the above new item?
McCain picked Sarah Palin after skin cancer treatments.
Why do the mice get all the best medical care first?
Because they paid for the planet in the first place
We already know that keytones have an ameliorating affect on Alzheimer's. This is because brain cells seem to have trouble absorbing gluclose, but they can get energy from keytones, which they can still absorb. So this skin cancer drug, may help brain cells absorb glucose, or it helps convert something to keytones, or it itself is made of keytones and is nourishing the brain.
Eat your coconut oil!
> appeared to reverse plaque buildup and improve memory
> in the brains of mice with Alzheimer's disease by reducing
> levels of beta-amyloid plaques in the brain that cause mental
> deficits in Alzheimer's disease
Wait, what did the study show? Did it show A) that Bexarotene improved memory in mice or B) that Bexarotene reduced levels of beta-amyloid plaques in the brains of mice? These are most emphatically not the same thing, unless some extremely recent study that I'm not aware of has shown C) that beta-amyloid plaques cause the mental deficits associated with Alzheimer's -- which would be very surprising, because several prior drug candidates that have been shown to reduce the plaques in human brains have failed to do anything useful for memory. There's a very strong correlation between Alzheimer's symptoms and the existence of the plaques, but causation has not been shown and so far appears not to be the case. This has been written about many times -- a quick search for "beta amyloid" on e.g. pipeline.corante.com will find you a bundle of posts on the subject.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I was a bit annoyed to see that Case Western Reserve University, the organization responsible for the research, was only mentioned once off-handedly in the middle of the article (and not at all in the /. post).
In fact, the ancient Chinese medical treatment is a good choice
Traditional Chinese Medicine