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Nanoparticle Completely Eradicates Hepatitis C Virus
Diggester writes "While Americans worry every year about getting a flu shot or preventing HIV/AIDS, the deadlier silent killer is actually Hepatitis C, killing over 15,000 people yearly in the U.S. since 2007 — and the numbers continue to increase as the carriers increase in age. While there is no vaccine, there is hope in nanoparticle technology. The breakthrough came from a group of researchers at the University of Florida, creating a 'nanozyme' that eliminates the Hep C 100% of the time; before now, the six-month treatment would only work about half the time. The particles are coated with two biological agents, the identifier and the destroyer; the identifier recognizes the virus and sends the destroyer off to eliminate the mRNA which allows Hep C to replicate." Reader Joiseybill adds a link to coverage in the IEEE Spectrum, and points out that the 100 percent success rate, while encouraging, is so far only in the lab.
"While Americans worry every year about getting a flu shot or preventing HIV/AIDS, the deadlier silent killer is actually Hepatitis C, killing over 15,000 ..."
The flu kills each year an average number of 25000-36000 people in the US, depending on the statistics.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm
So take everyone to the lab for treatment. Duh.
would have been nice for mice to be mentioned in the summary since it appears only to apply to them. lucky dogs
work in progress
A cure will never be approved by FDA et al. A cure brings less income than a life-long treatment plan. A cure must be avoided. I am sure this will prove to be considered a too "risky" treatment (as opposed to dying of HepC?) and it will never be approved.
However a 97% effective life-long treatment will be "safe" and approved.
Well, there are more than a hundred discoveries like these that demonstrated effectiveness of curing the uncurables in the past decade. Of those which went through the testing in man, well, maybe 2 or 3...
Back then, avastin, glivec and so on were expected to be magical cures for cancers.. now they exist only as expensive life-prolonging (with or without quality) therapy and only for those who are rich.
subject those cells to some radioactive material. that'll kill them too. doesn't mean it's safe or remotely useful.
Didn't read your rants. I'll assume they're the same ones as last week.
On behalf of Slashdot, I'd like to let you know the feelings of the posters:
Fuck off.
Forums slide because of ACs like yourself. There's rarely a good reason to go full AC on here.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Wasn't this the plot to "I am Legend"?
The previous treatment with ribavirin and interferon for one year had a 50% success rate. The newer six month treatment with the addition of Incivek for three months has over 75% rate. Since Incivek has only been on the market for about a year, that success rate is not as precise as it will be.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
Hepatitis C++? Hepatitis C#?
Objective Hepatitis C. *shudders*
"Go cure hepatitis C!"
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
This is non-news. Cures which work in cell cultures are a dime a dozen. This is at least six years from going to market, and has >95% chance to fail as an actual drug.
The real progress are the recently introduced, FDA-approved treatments by Vertex, Merck (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/23/us-vertex-idUSTRE74M3I320110523) and soon Gilead (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-bristolmyers-hepatitis-idUSBRE83I0T920120419). These are really fantastic advances in the treatment of that disease.
It goes for dental work too. If you need something particularly expensive, like a dental immplant, you could save money doing it in Barbados rather than the U.S. even with the airfare and hotel bill. (And yes, they have good dentistry there.)
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Sounds cool!
Can we get something to eliminate stupidity? The USA needs a triple-shot.
Jenny McCarthy is no doubt torn right now, between her hatred of vaccines and the desire to eradicate the HepC she no doubt has.
Long signatures suck.
HTML tip: To avoid aspect ratio problems, give IMG elements either a width or a height, not both. (Better still, do it in CSS and make it relative to the container.)
If we can program these nano cells to attack, all these, including aids and cancer...that would be the real deal right there....!
I wonder if you can reprogram it to remove old cells so as not to allow aging to happen too?
There is only doom the way you are going. Stop hinking now, and we may keep our cars. You know, everybody loves cars (to the point of insisting to spend endless hours inside them every day), and if you go that way, well, you'll discover that we should stop spending money on the death machines^W^W i mean... cars.
Also, everybody knows that cars are the single product that moves the economy nowadays. If we stopped manufacturing them, unenployment would rise to unprecedented levels (by the way, did you already throwed a stone in your windows today? You know, you have a duty to make the economy grow), and everybody will become poor.
So, for everybody's sake, stop thinking!
Rethinking email
He describes perfectly well what will be going on behind the scenes. People who used to work for big pharmaceutical industries are working in the FDA and former FDA people are working in the industry. So a cure has only got a chance if a big industry player can profit from it - and more than they could from providing life-long treatment.
I like my spaghetti with source.
Do not want.
It sounds like it's a long way off for human trials. I'm sure it will be put in the experamental stage and insurance will not cover it due to cost - just like so many other promising research. It always comes down to money. Oh well, I knew I would die from this just before they cured it!
While interesting, this research is far too late to be remotely useful. There are multiple Phase III trials currently ongoing with new generations of HCV treatments - at least one of these will become the de facto standard of treatment for HCV cures in the future, with REAL human cure rates of > 90% if not 100%, depending on genotype and statues re: failed previous treatment courses of course. That puts them about 8 years ahead of these guys. Interesting science though, and I wish them luck.
Lot of misinformation in these comments.
First, there are TONS of drugs either on the market or about to be that have cure rates >50% in most Genotype 1a (hardest to treat, most common in the US) patients who are treatment naive. Cure rate are lower for null responders (now around 30% or so), people with the IL-28b TT genotype, cirrhotics, so there's room for improvement there.
HCV protease inhibitors Incivek and Victrelis are on the market with HCV cure rates >70% in Genotype 1a treatment naive patients. Second-generation protease inhibitors like TMC-435 and ABT-072 are in Phase 2b and have high (>90%) SVR12 (cure rate) in Gt 1. Pan-genotypic nucleoside inhibitors like GS-7977 have high cure rates in treatment naive and are in Phase 3; other nucs (ALS-2200, ALS-2158, IDX184) are coming up. NS5a inhibitors like daclatasvir are in Phase 2. Non-nucleoside NS5b inhibitors like VX-222 or ABT-333 are in Phase 2. All of these newer drugs will be in all oral, well-tolerated combinations. This nanotech stuff is definitely late to the party.
By the way, re: big pharma: Some of these drugs (Victrelis, ABT-072, TMC-435, daclatasvir) are developed by big pharma, if that means monolithic firms based out of New Jersey; but a lot (Incivek, GS-7977, VX-222, ACH-1625, IDX184, ALS-2200) are not.
Microscopic particles that tinker with your mRNA? I'm sure there's no way this technology could ever be abused.