Drug from weed-like plant now in clinical trials (hopeful results for cancer treatment)

[SoCalDem]

http://www.joplinindependent.com/display_article.php/vwasta1342026649


Drug from weed-like plant now in clinical trials
Updated: 2012-07-11 11:10:49

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, working with Danish researchers, have developed a novel anticancer drug designed to travel-undetected by normal cells-through the bloodstream until activated by specific cancer proteins. The drug, made from a weed-like plant, has been shown to destroy cancers and their direct blood supplies, acting like a "molecular grenade," and sparing healthy blood vessels and tissues. In laboratory studies, researchers said they found that a three-day course of the drug, called G202, reduced the size of human prostate tumors grown in mice by an average of 50 percent within 30 days. In a direct comparison, G202 outperformed the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, reducing seven of nine human prostate tumors in mice by more than 50 percent in 21 days. Docetaxel reduced one of eight human prostate tumors in mice by more than 50 percent in the same time period.

In a report June 27 in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the researchers also reported that G202 produced at least 50 percent regression in models of human breast cancer, kidney cancer and bladder cancer. Based on these results, Johns Hopkins physicians have performed a phase I clinical trial to assess safety of the drug and have thus far treated 29 patients with advanced cancer. In addition to Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Texas-San Antonio are participating in the trial. A phase II trial to test the drug in patients with prostate cancer and liver cancer is planned. The drug G202 is chemically derived from a weed called http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Thapsia_garganica_(Bauer).jpg/220px-Thapsia_garganica_(Bauer).jpg that grows naturally in the Mediterranean region. The plant makes a product -- dubbed thapsigargin -- that since the time of ancient Greece has been known to be toxic to animals. In Arab caravans, the plant was known as the "death carrot" because it would kill camels if they ate it, the researchers noted.

"Our goal was to try to re-engineer this very toxic natural plant product into a drug we might use to treat human cancer," says lead study author Samuel Denmeade, M.D., professor of oncology, urology, pharmacology and molecular sciences. "We achieved this by creating a format that requires modification by cells to release the active drug."

snip

[Politicalboi]

1. It's amazing

Marijuana has been known to help with cancer since 1974. The possible cure has been in our reach for decades, but we chose to ignore it because it was Marijuana. Almost 40 years, and our government fought us tooth and nail all the way. And now this plant just comes along and gets noticed. If the hippies started smoking it, would they also wait another 40 years?

[Tsiyu]

2. No, they'd make it illegal

so that the US could hold a patent on it, but we couldn't grow the "weed-like" plant.

This is an ownership society.

You own all the money: you own every fucking thing else.

[XemaSab]

3. This has nothing to do with marijuana

Cannabis is in the Cannabaceae and Thapsia is in the Apiaceae.

Hops and hackberries are related to MJ; carrots, Queen Anne's lace, and water hemlock are related to this other plant.

[TheWraith]

4. Marijuana abates symptoms of the disease and treatment. That's not a cure.

There's some possible connection between cannabinoids and controlling tumor growth, but the actual science there has been drowned out by the inevitable "Pot is a miracle cure" brigade who do ten times more damage to the credibility of medical marijuana than underestimating it ever has.