[BetaAmyloid]

Hopefully this isn't a problem, but this was posted here due to my question pertaining to organic chemistry. Sorry if it has to be moved.

- I was wondering, does anyone know anything about what the actual drug is that this doctor made that shrunk his patient's lung cancer tumor from 100% to 50%?

- Does PD173074 mean anything, or, is that just the name of the drug?

- Does anyone think that it will work for this specific strand 100%, or was it just this guy's lucky day?

Here is the link:

Drug Shrinks Lung Cancer Tumour

[BetaAmyloid]

Sorry for the double post, but I thought I would add something since I was reading up on this.

This doctor found a way to stop the attachment of FGF-2 to peptide bonds on the bilayer of cells due to the presence of a "help" signal. Therefore, the attachment to the FGF-2 by his drug, disables the FGF-2 to attach to the peptide bonds to tell the cell to divide and multiply.

Here is another link, specifically talking about FGF-2:

Basic fibroblast growth factor

Another question, without the division of cells, how long does it take for a cell to die off?

Thanks 

[nj_bartel]

 http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/ProductDetail.do?D7=0&N5=Product%20No.|BRAND_KEY&N4=P2499|SIGMA&N25=0&QS=ON&F=SPEC

For your second question - it varies drastically by type of cell.

[BetaAmyloid]

For your second question - it varies drastically by type of cell.

Just so you know, your link doesn't work! 

And, what time frame are we speaking of? Could it be 1 day to 1 year, or...?

[Borek]

Just so you know, your link doesn't work! 

Link is displayed OK, just automatic linking doesn't work - forum software was not able to deal with a dot.

[BetaAmyloid]

Link is displayed OK, just automatic linking doesn't work - forum software was not able to deal with a dot.

Ah, Sorry about that! 

[nj_bartel]

Just a few examples I know offhand -

brain cells - human lifespan
muscle cells - months
some macrophages - hours to days

[BetaAmyloid]

Cool, thanks.

I'm surprised more people haven't heard/read about this! It's pretty big news - I think.  

This guy is running me out of a job! 

[Scatter]

Hopefully this isn't a problem, but this was posted here due to my question pertaining to organic chemistry. Sorry if it has to be moved.

- I was wondering, does anyone know anything about what the actual drug is that this doctor made that shrunk his patient's lung cancer tumor from 100% to 50%?

Do you have more info that wasn't in the article?  The article says that the drug eliminated tumors in 50% of mice they tested it on, not shrunk tumors from 100 to 50%.

[catalyst]

Even if it had shrunk it by 50% for one person, treatment with any kind of drug has shown that you rarely get something to work the same way 100% of the time for every person. This sounds promising, but it doesn't sound like a cure to me, at least not yet.

Especially if it has only shown to work on 50% of rats, was there any human testing done as of yet? What happened to the other 50% of the rats? Death?

[BetaAmyloid]

Do you have more info that wasn't in the article?  The article says that the drug eliminated tumors in 50% of mice they tested it on, not shrunk tumors from 100 to 50%.

Sorry! It didn't shrink by 50% - well, I don't know exactly by how much, it could have been more. Apparently it was a pretty big tumor and it shrunk this guys tumor significantly to the point of him getting the title of "lung cancer curer."

I didn't see any other articles on it! I know that it has to do with FGF-2 in blood vessels, it blocks this drug from attaching to the peptide bonds on cell membranes (which allow it to divide rapidly) - therefore, it doesn't divide any longer.

Even if it had shrunk it by 50% for one person, treatment with any kind of drug has shown that you rarely get something to work the same way 100% of the time for every person. This sounds promising, but it doesn't sound like a cure to me, at least not yet.

Especially if it has only shown to work on 50% of rats, was there any human testing done as of yet? What happened to the other 50% of the rats? Death?

Human testing was done - read the article I posted up top. I'm not sure about the other rats, it didn't give any procedures or results of the test. I just thought that it was a fairly significant discovery. 

[Yggdrasil]

Here's the reference to the journal article being cited by the BBC news story:

Pardo et al. (2009)  The Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor Inhibitor PD173074 Blocks Small Cell Lung Cancer Growth In vitro and In vivo.  Cancer. Res. 69: 8645-8651.  doi:10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-09-1576

Abstract:

Lung cancer is the commonest cancer killer. Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is initially chemosensitive, but rapidly relapses in a chemoresistant form with an overall survival of <5%. Consequently, novel therapies are urgently required and will likely arise from an improved understanding of the disease biology. Our previous work showed that fibroblast growth factor-2 induces proliferation and chemoresistance in SCLC cells. Here, we show that the selective fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitor PD173074 blocks H-510 and H-69 SCLC proliferation and clonogenic growth in a dose-dependent fashion and prevents FGF-2–induced chemoresistance. These effects correlate with the inhibition of both FGFR1 and FGFR2 transphosphorylation. We then determined the efficacy of daily oral administration of PD173074 for 28 days in two human SCLC models. In the H-510 xenograft, tumor growth was impaired similar to that seen with single-agent cisplatin administration, increasing median survival compared with control sham–treated animals. Crucially, the effect of cisplatin was significantly potentiated by coadministration of PD173074. More dramatically, in H-69 xenografts, PD173074 induced complete responses lasting >6 months in 50% of mice. These effects were not a consequence of disrupted tumor vasculature but instead correlated with increased apoptosis (caspase 3 and cytokeratin 18 cleavage) in excised tumors. Moreover, in vivo imaging with 3'-deoxy-3'-[18F]fluorothymidine–positron emission tomography ([18F]FLT-PET) showed decreased intratumoral proliferation in live animals treated with the compound at 7 to 14 days. Our results suggest that clinical trials of FGFR inhibitors should be undertaken in patients with SCLC and that [18F]FLT-PET imaging could provide early in vivo evidence of response. [Cancer Res 2009;69(22):8645–51]

I'll note a few things:

• Human testing has not been done, or at least was not reported in this study.  The experimental system used was human tumor cell lines implanted into immune deficient mice (so that the mice do not reject the implated tumor.  This is a standard system for these types of studies).  So, although they suggest the drug is effective on certain types of human lung cancer cells (more on this below), they do not address the more important issue of toxicity of the drug in humans.
• The authors tested two model strains for lung cancer for which FGFR signaling is an important transforming factor.  It is not known whether the drug will have similar effects on other types of lung cancer or what fraction of lung cancers it can treat in patients.
• The drug slows tumor growth and may reduce tumor size but does not eliminate the tumor.  Importantly, when the authors look to see whether the drug reduces metastasis of the tumors, they find that the drug does not reduce tumor metastasis.

The drug obviously shows potential and could be useful in the treatment of some cancers.  However, more research needs to be done to determine exactly how good this drug is.  In short, it may become an option for treating lung cancer in the future, but it is certainly no magic bullet.

[BetaAmyloid]

Human testing has not been done, or at least was not reported in this study.

One subject has been tested on! He enlisted into a medical trial because his doctors told him he had no hope to survive his tumor. He tried the tumor suppressor drug, and it has currently caused a significant decrease in the tumor. It was all over the news - it is a fact (for this one person)!

[Scatter]

 it is a fact (for this one person)!

[citation needed]

[BetaAmyloid]

[citation needed]

I can't find the guy on the internet. It was all over the news for my state though...telling about the guy who had lung cancer and his tumor decreased extraordinarily. That's my only citation..