Medical Related News From The American Chemical Society

Main Category: Medical Devices / Diagnostics
Also Included In: Pain / Anesthetics;  Lung Cancer;  Pharma Industry / Biotech Industry
Article Date: 10 Aug 2007 - 9:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Bright future for new drug delivery system intended to minimize side effects
Journal of the American Chemical Society

In an advance toward the long-sought ability to deliver medication directly to diseased tissue, while minimizing side effects and damage to healthy parts of the body, scientists are reporting development of a new dosing system that is controlled by light. The study is scheduled for the August 15 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a weekly journal.

Colin P. McCoy and colleagues in Northern Ireland describe their new molecular-scale dosing devices as a "new paradigm for precise control of drug dosing using light." The devices consist of medications that are combined with certain chemical compounds that respond to light in ways that release precisely controlled amounts of the drug. Drug release begins when light falls on the compounds, and lasts only as long as the light continues to shine.

The study reports successful laboratory tests of the system in the controlled release of three common medications used to treat pain and inflammation -- aspirin, ibuprofen and ketoprofen. One potential use cited in the study would be in the treatment of urinary catheter infections, where the drug is held latently in the catheter, and is released when needed. The system could be applied for other conditions using an implant under the skin for precisely controlled drug dosing, the researchers suggest.

"Light-Triggered Molecule-Scale Drug Dosing Devices"

CONTACT:
Colin P. McCoy
Queen's University Belfast
Belfast, UK

Developing a 'toolkit' for personalized medicine
Journal of Proteome Research

An international team of researchers is proposing a plan for building a 'toolkit' for personalized medicine -- that long-anticipated era in which physicians customize efforts to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases to match the unique genetic characteristics of each individual patient.

In a review article scheduled for ACS's Journal of Proteome Research, a monthly publication, Fredrik Nyberg, Gyorgy Marko-Varga, Atsushi Ogiwara and colleagues point out that cancer therapy already is moving toward individualized treatments selected according to tumor cell type and patients' predicted responses to different kinds of anti-cancer drugs. Their paper describes key features of state-of-the-art proteomic profiling, in which blood tests are used to analyze single proteins and multiple 'fingerprint' protein patterns that are present, including proteins that can serve as biomarkers for disease.

The article discusses components of a toolkit that physicians could use in everyday medicine, including rapid methods for identifying proteins in the blood and processing the resulting data. "The potential of our proteomics toolkit hopefully brings us one step closer to a practical personalized medicine," the report states.

"Personalized medicine and Proteomics--Lessons from Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer"

CONTACT:
Fredrik Nyberg, Ph.D.
AstraZeneca R&D Molndal
Molndal, Sweden

Toward faster tests to identify carcinogens and other environmental toxins
Chemical & Engineering News

After years of frustration with traditional methods for testing the toxicity of chemicals in the environment, scientists are working to adapt faster, simpler screening methods that do not require animals, now used by the pharmaceutical industry to identify potential drug candidates, according to an article scheduled for Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS's weekly newsmagazine.

The article, written by C&EN Senior Editor Celia Henry Arnaud, explains that animal testing long has been the gold standard for environmental toxicology. But such tests take years to complete, can't always be confidently extrapolated to humans, and require the use of laboratory animals. As a result, only a handful of commercial chemicals have gone through the complete battery of tests used by the Federal Government's National Toxicology Program in its most thorough toxicology investigations.

Arnaud explains how environmental toxicologists are eyeing an attractive alternative -- the so-called high-throughput screening methods that pharmaceutical companies use to find potential drug candidates within libraries of compounds. "If successful, such assays may in the short term reduce the animal toxicity tests that are necessary and in the long term replace animal tests entirely," the article states. It points out, however, that formidable challenges lie ahead in adapting those tests for accurately predicting which commercial chemicals are potential human health threats.

"Toward Toxicity Testing Without Animals: High-throughput methods from pharma could reduce need for animals when assessing toxicity of chemicals in the environment"

This story is available at http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/85/8532sci1.html

###

The American Chemical Society -- the world's largest scientific society -- is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Source: Michael Woods
American Chemical Society

• Additional
• References
• Citations