Bees Fight Cancer - Article

[bnatural]

Bees to the rescue:

http://www.devicelink.com/mddi/blog/?p=1779

My hobby and my professional life have finally crossed paths.

For those, who don't want to bother with the link:

Bees Join Battle Against Cancer

Whether they like it or not, bees may play a critical role in fighting cancer. That’s because researchers at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis) have found a way to harness bee venom toxin and use it to kill tumors. In high enough concentrations, the toxin, called melittin, can destroy virtually any cell it comes into contact with. Scientists were banking on that kind of power when they attached melittin to nanosized spheres that delivered the toxin to tumor cells in mice. The researchers are calling the spheres nanobees. These drug-delivery devices are continuing to pop up and make us rethink future treatment.

Bill

[Rohe Bee Ranch]

If this pans out I might be able to retire finally.:D

[Paraplegic Racehorse]

Neat research, but ... when will be a readily-available treatment? Ten years? Five years? Two?

Then again... all the more reason to get venom-traps. Venom is already worth more than gold weight-for-weight.

[Rohe Bee Ranch]

Update by CNN here:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/18/nanotech.cancer.nano.tumors/index.html

[bnatural]

Cool story.


Neat research, but ... when will be a readily-available treatment? Ten years? Five years? Two?

I could cite personal experience in this area, but can quote directly from RBR's CNN article:

"Dr. Ellen Vitetta, who also works on targeted nanotech cancer therapies at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, found the approach intriguing, but said it will be at least 10 years before something like this gets to the market. That's because what works in mice doesn't always work in humans, as she learned while developing a targeted antibody cancer treatment."


From a recent article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (a journal in the drug discovery field from Nature Publishing):

38% of drugs failed Phase I human clinical studies (safety / blood levels.)
60% of those remaining failed in Phase II (basic efficacy.)
40% of the remaining candidates failed in Phase III (big, expensive efficacy.)
23% of the ones that made it through clinical trials failed to be approved by the FDA.

So, out of every 100 drugs that make it as far as human clinical trials, less than 12 make it to approval.

And, that is after the drugs had already made it through initial discovery, bench testing and animal testing. That number is like 1 in 1,000.

It is unbelievably expensive and time-consuming to bring a novel technology to market. It is a little easier for devices than for drugs or biologics, primarily because the clinical trials are smaller (a few hundred patients vs. several thousand), but that gap is narrowing, too.

Anyway, I brought it up, because I think it is cool to see bee-related products being used in medicine and research, even if the fruits of that labor are years off, if they ever materialize at all. I'm sure everyone already knows about apitherapy for MS and arthritis, while in Europe and other parts of the world honey is actually sold and regulated as a medical device (wound treatment).

Bill