Azaran on 13/2/2012 at 23:14
CO's definitely the way to go. Quick and painless.
faetal on 14/2/2012 at 01:06
"But the drug must make the leap from success in mice to success in humans, which has foiled many other promising Alzheimer’s drugs."
I work in research, so was suspicious of the title. This is a side effect of how media reports on clinical science. If study (a) shows promising result (usually in mice), the media basically touts it as cure for X. Some labs make this worse by playing up to it a little by sexing up their PR in order to attract attention to their research. Promising results in mice != cure for Alzheimer's, as great as that would be.
Azaran on 14/2/2012 at 02:05
Given that both mice and humans are mammals, I think it might have a better chance of working. It's not a guarantee by any means, but it's a very good sign.
faetal on 14/2/2012 at 02:27
Given that I already said I worked in research, you'll appreciate that I already know that and also that while mice and human are both mammals, the variability in gene polymorphisms between different people is often enough to render drugs less useful or not useful or in worst cases, harmful. The genetic difference between mice and humans when individual variability is taken into account is an even bigger IF. Especially when you bear in mind that lab mouse populations tend to be very genetically similar. Animal experiments are used to inform the early stages of drug discovery, it is only the media who leaps on this type of result and plasters EUREKA everywhere in 3D lettering.
This is why when people sign up to phase 1 trials, they have to sign all sorts of waivers. If this research is reproducible enough, then (presumably as it is already in use in humans for different indications) it can move to stage 1 trials in humans, after which there are 3 more levels of clinical trials to go through. Because of the drug's side-effects, it will first take time to get ethical clearance to use it in Alzheimer's patients. Which as you can imagine, is difficult, as there are issues with confirming informed consent with Alzheimer's patients.
I'm not trying to take the wind out of anyone's sails here, but it's frustrating when the media distorts the rate of progression in medicine development. Optimism is nice and all, but it doesn't cure disease - research does.
demagogue on 14/2/2012 at 02:30
I have a similar perspective from when I was doing regulatory law. When politicians & consumer advocacy groups get involved it gets worse. They cherry pick some study that says something like electric lines over schools or GMO corn did something to a few mice (in studies that are either deeply flawed or frankly invented by misunderstanding some other study) and the next thing they want to do is ban all electricity lines near schools and GMOs, and flood their regulatory agency with hate mail, or one of these studies come out on some new drug and they think the gov't is stonewalling them as part of some conspiracy to keep the drug from them & make more money. It's not how good science or good regulations work. Whenever we start regulating based on laypeople getting the heebee-jeebees or the OMG-Y-U-not-doing-this-already's we may as fucking well go back to regulation by witchdoctor.
It's a 2-way street too, when science actually does say there's something really going on, like climate change, and then smug layman assholes say "They're just selling their politics as science" like they're really in a position to distinguish good & bad science ... as if the atmospheric carbon meter sitting on a mountain somewhere in Hawaii gives a shit about anybody's politics. Sometimes science isn't really a conspiracy to bring the little guy down but, when it's good science, is saying something really about nature -- like something is really there when people really don't want to believe it, or something isn't really established as there yet even though some want to interpret it that way & really want to believe it.
edit: That said, of course laypeople have the right to care about hidden risks & new drugs, and agencies have to be accountable to them & not actually stonewall the public & treat them like meddlesome children. It's part of what democracy is about, and why it's an interesting field.
faetal on 14/2/2012 at 02:38
Yep.
It's like the anti breast cancer drug Herceptin. It's a new generation, antagonistic antibody treatment which is moderately effective with a small proportion of breast cancer patients who carry a certain version of a specific receptor. So the drug was targeted to those it could help and achieved a moderate rate of success. Then you get someone who is not responding to 1st gen cancer treatments and is asking for Herceptin but they have been identified as not having the right form of the receptor, rendering the drug basically ineffective and all of a sudden you have a tabloid news paper campaign about this mother of three being left for dead by profit-driven pharma barons etc...
When it comes to science, never, ever go by what the media says. Not that many papers even assign someone with scientific background to scientific stories. Hence: (
http://hellokinsella.posterous.com/the-daily-mail-list-of-things-that-give-you-c)
Azaran on 14/2/2012 at 05:04
I still hope this turns out to be the cure. My grandmother had Alzheimers, so I'm especially interested in science wiping out this curse on mankind once and for all.
demagogue on 14/2/2012 at 05:22
Oh absolutely. My grandfather had severe alzheimers and my grandmother to a lesser extent, and it's a loathsome illness. I despised what it did to them. And my other grandfather had severe parkinson's, and I despised what that did too. Any step closer to a cure & treatments can't come fast enough.
DDL on 14/2/2012 at 09:00
The nice thing about this one, at least, is it's already cleared for use in humans. This saves a lot of paperwork (and money).
This is becoming increasingly common, in that many of the large drug companies have..pretty much fuck-all in the pipelines (at least in terms of small-molecule drugs), so they're asking "do any of our existing drugs also work for other things?"
It's also of course horrendously risky in terms of press releases, since a lot of these conditions are terminal: people might not wait to actually see if the trials pan out, they'll grasp at any straws they can.
Since the drugs are already out there, they can get hold of them (often pseudo-legally). And then..."unsupervised uncontrolled field-trial!" == potential badness.
Plus of course in terms of alzheimers you'd need to remember that even if you could clear the plaque buildup, if the affected neurons have already died you probably wouldn't regain lost memories. Still, it'd be better than nothing.
faetal on 14/2/2012 at 09:49
Yep. Let's hope this indication is at doses that have been previously used in humans, or it gets more tricky. But yeah, most of the research that goes on within pharma is drug target discovery and they hit their peak of new drug design ages ago and now are having to make a lot of their money by re-engineering existing drugs and re-marketing them as newer, better versions of drugs which do more or less the same thing. It would be great if this turns out to be something, just saying that in order to avoid false hope and the inevitable disappointment that brings, just avoid the media when it comes to big grand statements about WE FOUND A CURE for anything. Everyone wants this disease cured, but it has to be an actual cure, not just twisted press.
