Possible Breakthrough for AIDS Cure 787
kryonD writes "Researchers believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do. While most of the community is still hesitant to comment on this until it passes peer review, initial results show that their method attacks and kills ALL variations of the virus. A fast track through the FDA could have one of the world's leading problems licked in less than a decade."
Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, any time I hear something potentially huge being hyped in the mainstream press before I hear about it in scientific journals, my eyebrows tend to rise a bit and I tend to be perhaps even more skeptical.
"We have some preliminary but very exciting results [but] we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype."
Uh...... yeah. That is why I am reading about it in the Salt Lake Tribune before hearing about it in Science or Nature?
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Insightful)
If it truely does work, then it's a huge discovery - I just hope the "owners" can put aside huge profits for once, and make the drug available for as near cost as practicable.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Insightful)
He shouldn't have to. In fact, I'll so far as to say your profile is irrelevant. Everyone's is. Each comment must be judged on its own merits, and its context within the current discussion, regardless of who posted it or their profile or their previous posts in other threads or their journal entries or anything else equally non sequiter.
Read what I post, son.
That's exactly what he did, you're only pissed because he didn't like what you posted. And I too happen to agree with the mods on this one.
Back on topic...
I don't believe that "a fast track through the FDA" is ever advisable for any new drug meant for human consumption. Just because it has the potential to cure one of the world's modern plagues doesn't make the likelihood of harmful side effects any less probable. In fact, the huge demand for such a drug, and the massive use of it that will surely follow once (if) it passes through the FDA, should make the testing for potential side effects all the more important. I'm guessing more people would be using this drug than anything else the FDA has had to review and approve in quite a long time, if not ever, and I'm sure no one here wants millions of people across the world to suddely drop dead due to unforeseen effects down the road.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Insightful)
The term "fast track" suggests that thoroughness is compromised for sake of expediency. That's not the case. It's more like putting certain drugs at the top of the review list, prioritizing based on the lethalness of the disease in question. This doesn't even come into play until Phase 3 of human trials. I'm currently waiting on a Hep C drug that has shown a lot of promise and am very pleased that the FDA has decided to fast track it, as my liver will eventually fail and I will eventually die.
As for this drug, they're about a million miles away. These results were produced in test tubes. I can kill HIV in a test tube with a cup of bleach. They haven't even started animal trials yet, let alone human. This kind of reporting is terribly irresponsible.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, it may be that this "reporting" is simply just a PR campaign to bolster public pressure to either get this particular drug "fast-tracked" or to undermine the FDA altogether, in order to help the beleagured, almost bankrupt, struggling for every penny of income drug companies. (My first thought was that it's just a pump-and-dump for the company's stock, but after thinking about it, it could a bigger fish they're trying to fry).
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Interesting)
You just haven't been paying attention, have you?
Right now, there is a debate going on about the availability (and FDA approval) of an HPV vaccine. It is almost 100% effective at stopping a virus that can cause cervical cancer in women
Er, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The figures for 'way back in 2000 were 10,000 a day, 4,000 of those from AIDS. Last year, there were over 3 million deaths and nearly 5 million new infections. That would wipe out my entire state in five months, eight through AIDS alone, and AIDS alone would do in the entire country in about eight years.
True, there are those other diseases around -- curable ones too -- but don't underestimate the damage which AIDS does. There are 12 million AIDS orphans alive as I type, for example.
Amongst other things, a common urban myth in Africa is that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS... so you get AIDS-infected men raping girls who are so young that they have to be virgins. Nice.
It's also largely curable by the same education which would reduce AIDS and practically eliminate tuberculosis and malaria. In fact, the basic directives for achieving this are something like 4500 years old. Nevertheless, a magic bullet for AIDS would be a more than welcome assistant. My only real reservations center around what else it kills besides AIDS.
Re:Er, what? (Score:3, Informative)
They would have the ability to provide food for all their population if it weren't for all the tribal wars over territory. If farmers and their families spend all their time trying to keep out of warzones and having their crops raided by guerilla armies, they don't have the produce or time to set up food-markets. Consequently, the country ends up with famines.
And there is a lot of knowledge required to keep a farm producing food at an optimum le
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Informative)
The one big reason I support AIDS research is precisely because it is a "fashionable" disease. We finally have a virus that the general public, political figures, and media/publicity types will support spending massive amounts of time and money researching a cure for. Every single breakthrough or discovery in researching AIDS helps the research on all of the ther viral diseases out there, that no one has spent much money or time on.
Cancer research has made huge advances in the last 50 years. Bacterial disease prevention and cure is at an amazing level compared to 50 years ago. Genetic disorders, heart disease, allergic reactions, etc. have all had large advances in their areas. The success of these has been due in large part to one or both of two factors. Either some celebrity gets the disease, or supports research into curing it (Jerry Lewis telethon, etc.) or the barriers to research are low, with significant gains acheivable by just finding improved ways of doing what is already being done.
Viral infections, however, are notoriously intractable to anything we try. Until AIDS came along we had very little understanding of how virii operated and what their lifecycle consisted of. Up until AIDS, very few virii were widespread-debilitating-and most importantly-lethal. It is hard to generate the kind of support for research needed to attack the problem with poster diseases like Herpes, Influenza, Chicken Pox, and the Measles. Especially since we have been somewhat successful with the strategy of developing an inoculation then letting all the non-inoculated die off. Worked with Small Pox, almost finished with Polio, if we can get the Africans to stop killing the doctors providing inoculation.
If we can actually figure out how to cure someone from any single virus, the door opens to treatments for the last great frontier of immunological pathology. If it takes jumping on a bandwagon to support battling an entirely preventable disease killing a fashionable (but minor in number to the sufferers of other diseases) portion of society, I'll be right there leading the band and beating the big drum.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:4, Insightful)
Makes me scratch my head. You know if I developed a drug that cured some disease, I think the only people I'd have to tell about it are the MDs, AND I could do that through a scientific journal and roll that cost into the R&D program.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Insightful)
If you care so much about an affordable AIDS medicine, do the work yourself. Or at least offer the people willing to do the work something of equal value in exchange for their efforts.
Otherwise, you're just as guilty of putting profits ahead of humanitarian aid as those profit-minded researchers you vilify. Unless, of course, your day job already involves doing har
Eminent Domain (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, but why stop there? Let's outlaw investment into curing diseases. That prevents all of these investors demanding a Return on Investment. No more conflict. Let's just leave them to making "useless shit like viagra".
Don't think I'm saying we shouldn't cure disease. We should. Let's just disallow any money to be invested in curing disease, and only allow diseases to be cured for free. Doesn't that solve all of these problems?
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I have my douts as to whether this is real, or just a hype from some psudo-scientests trying to get investors to throw huge piles of money at them.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't think I'm saying we shouldn't cure disease. We should. Let's just disallow any money to be invested in curing disease, and only allow diseases to be cured for free. Doesn't that solve all of these problems?
Don't be a fool. Cutting down private funding doesn't meen that there won't b
Re:Peter Singer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Insightful)
An AC with a soul!? That's rare. I'd have to agree though. Personally I think anyone who would rather get rich from creating an AIDS cure than actually curing as many people possible is morally depraved. The biggest problem with capitalism is that it raises the value of wealth beyond that of humanity. In the end that isn't very good for humanity as a whole, it's only good for a tiny minority.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that so? I hope you practice what you preach. "Rich" is quite subjective. A programmer making $35k/year in the US is "rich" by Bangalore standards. Should that programmer volunteer to send his job overseas, so that 2 or 3 Indians can be employed for the same money, thus allowing them to support their families while the US programmer is "poor"?
Can I assume that you survive by eating the bare minimum of what you need to sustain you, while donating all the rest of your food to the local food bank? Can I assume that the few clothes you own are ragged and torn, since you would never indulge in something as frivolous and selfish as buying new clothes, when your old ones keep you warm enough? Can I assume you share a leaky, moldy basement apartment with 4 other martyrs, and you send all your spare cash to feeding the hungry in Africa?
Get off your horse, you self-righteous hypocrite. If you live in the west, then you are already very "rich" by world standards. The very fact that you're using a computer right now demonstrates that you are in the wealthiest 10% of the entire planet. Why did you take the time to write that post, when you could have been down at the local soup kitchen helping feed the homeless, or at the library reading to/educating blind children?
It's easy to talk big when you're still living off mommy and daddy's handouts, and you don't have to put your money where your mouth is. Even easier, when you hide that same mouth, Mr. "Anonymous Coward."
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:4, Insightful)
To expect or demand self-sacrifice from others, without demanding the same from yourself, is not altruism. It's the same stupid greed that motivates the profiteer: the desire to serve yourself and let others serve the needy.
I should expect that the parent poster is giving up a measure of himself equal in proportion to the sacrifice he demands of these researchers, if he is going to make such demands. If he is not working long hours, stretching and stressing his mind and body to the limit, solving problem after problem conducting test after tedious test, all in the service of the poor people of Africa, then he has no call to demand such a sacrifice from anybody else.
So where's your altruism? Are you posting from a Peace Corps base camp in sub-Saharan Africa? Or are you, like the parent poster, simply doing your day job, paying your taxes, making the occasional charitable contribution, and greedily demanding that some scientist in Utah put in enough hours on altruistic good works to ease your conscience?
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:4, Insightful)
I just hope the "owners" can put aside huge profits for once, and make the drug available for as near cost as practicable.
I feel the need to comment on this last part. You definitely put it politely, so please don't feel this whole rant is directed at you, but I get tired of people who slag the Pharmaceutical industry for making profits. The dollars involved in reasearch and development are huge! On average it takes 1.8 Billion USD to bring an NME (new molecular entity) to market. The successes fund the next breakthroughs, the failures really hurt. If a pharma company is ever at risk of developing a product that could be forced to be sold as "cheaply as possible" that will weigh heavily on their decision to research it. It is business.
What is better? 20 companies devoting billions of dollars to the creation of a cure in search of profits, or 2 devoting millions in search of altruism? I put my money on the 20 to come up with something faster. For those who feel like giving money away, whether they be companies, or individuals, they are more than welcome to do so when a cure has been discovered.
Anyone who wants to say "Those big bad pharma companies should make little to no profit on their discoveries." is welcome to do so, but my reply to that is,
"If you feel so strongly about it, do something yourself. Go out of pocket. Make a sacrifice. Take as much of your disposable income as possible and donate to an organization that will see to it that people get this cure."
Most people aren't willing to do that. Most people would rather complain about Pharma. Personally, I think if someone comes up with a cure for this, they should get filthy stinking rich from it, or at least, make more than a pro golfer!
Again, sorry, this wasn't meant to flame you, and as I said, your post was very polite about it, and certain parts of me agree with you, but I would rather see people pulling together and doing something than hiding behind the excuse that Big Pharma should save the world....and cheaply at that.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Insightful)
But so long as everyone keeps whining about how little prescription drugs cost in other cou
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Insightful)
Drug companies spend more on marketing than they do on research and development - I think that sums up in a nutshell whats wrong here.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Interesting)
The quote was something like "Unfortunately, it is not possible, with human viruses, to give money to a group of people and tell them, go ahead, make a cure for Malaria. It just does not works like that".
With this what I want to show is that, this pharmaceutical companies cant do the
Pharma giving a drug away--happened already (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, it could be possible to find a balance of both, but it wouldn't be easy. Startup funding would also be a challenge. Who is going to put up millions of d
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Informative)
You definitely would NOT mention it to the press if you wanted to get published in a top journal like Nature, Science, or Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They have strict restrictions against talking to the press before the work is accepted and published. If you feel like ignoring these restrictions, then these journals can and will yank your paper. See, for instance http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/policy/embarg o.html [nature.com].
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Interesting)
Its a treatment that cures all that ails ya!
" Further, the compounds appear to have few limits on how they are delivered to patients. Although early indications are for application of CSAs with an ointment or cream, pills or injections may also be developed - if the compound gets to market. "
you can rub it on or drink it down, it don't matter!
Yeah, I think I will remain skeptical as well.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:4, Funny)
I'd wager they'd solve the AIDS problem... and most other problems plaguing humankind.
Botuline, cyanide, ricin...
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Funny)
You just blinded my mind's eye...
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Informative)
this actually makes perfect sense considering the economics and regulatory hurdles of FDA clinical trials. [wikipedia.org] *
for a topical NDA (New Drug Application), the costs of a full trial is in the range of 5K-10K per patient. for NDAs that are injected or ingested, the costs are an order of magnitude higher.
furthermore, clinical trials have four steps. pre-clinical, phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3. at each stage, the chances of the trial failing increases quite significantly, resulting in major financial losses. in other words, if the company spends $300M to bring a drug to phase 3 but fails at that stage, the entire cost is completely sunk.
for ingested or injected, the risks of failing at a later stage are much higher than topical drugs. in fact, 1 in 5 drugs that reach phase 3 pass.
considering that the article states that the product is both an anti-viral and anti-fungal agent, there are many applications in the topical space from warts to foot fungus. my guess is that the pharma company will try to quickly bring the drug to market as a topical for these areas due to the above reasons while preparing for clinical trials for HIV/AIDS in parallel.
*the numbers used here are conjected, but scale is about right.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that nags at my mind is that we have found wonderdrugs in the past.
Penicillin, which could cure most kinds of bacterial infections, could be taken orally or as a salve, and it just got rid of the bacteria. It really was a wonder drug.
And cowpox was just perfect. You just inject some, and you become immune to smallpox with basically no ill effects. These things weren't found by years of research; they were stumbled upon, and they just worked. So I'm not conceding the thing as impossible. I'm quite willing to admit that they've got something.
All they'd have to do to convince me is to inject themselves with a pint or so of HIV infested blood.
Re:Raised eyebrows (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems to carry with it the implication that the discovery of the smallpox vaccine was the result of a carefully-crafted study undertaken by a major pharmaceutical corporation. Keep in mind that the smallpox vaccine was discovered more than two hundred years ago by a lone guy who took a huge risk by infecting a boy with cowpox and then deliberately trying to infect him with smallpox. If the theory wasn't correct, well... oops! Vaccination was not exactly old hat at the time, either. The smallpox vaccine was the first vaccine, and the word "vaccine" itself is derived from - you guessed it - the latin word for cow, which is "vacca".
If you didn't mean to imply this, then I apologize.
It's much more possible than you think ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no med student but the article states that: Ok, if this is true, then we've overcome the large part of AIDS (immunodeficiency). We can just boost the hell out of the white blood cell mimicking Ceragenins. Will this stop AIDS? Maybe not, but it will provide the defenses that AIDS rips from its patients. If I recall correctly, it's not the AIDS virus itself that kills a victim but instead another desease/sickness that occurs from a weakened immune system.
What's exciting is that the AIDS virus probably doesn't infect/reproduce when it is being killed by Ceragenins like it does to white blood cells. Thus, they may have something here if their premises hold true.
Googling for "Ceragenins" results in zero hits. Which means this is some magical elixir that is a mistakened cure all. Or perhaps it's something very obscure that no one has thought of until today? We shall see.
Re:It's much more possible than you think ... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe Ceragenins have been black listed for having 'penis size', 'discrete medication', and 'horny teenage girls' on their web site
-Rick
Before we discredit this too soon... (Score:3, Interesting)
First, the article says that, the compound invented by Paul D. Savage of Brigham Young University appears to hunt down and kill HIV.
Now, doing an actual search on Brigham Young's website turns up 0 hits for "Paul D. Savage". It does, however, turn up quite a few hits [google.com] for just Paul Savage. In fact, it turns up this dude [byu.edu], a "Paul B. Savage". He seems pretty smart [byu.edu] (MS Word document link). Plus, he's gotten recognition [byu.edu] for research in T-Cells, important information that co
Re:It's much more possible than you think ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, I'd bet they're pumping the stock. I'm not particularly confident that they've got what they claim (or that its efficacy is as high as they claim).
Re:It's much more possible than you think ... (Score:3, Informative)
The immune system is one of the most complex systems in the body, and it has one of the most difficult jobs. There is just an incredible array of different cells and substances runn
Ceragenins = Ceragenix? (Score:3, Informative)
The Stock (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Stock (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Stock (Score:3, Funny)
Can you say scam?
sc... scor... scat... scrot.. sca..., erm no, it appears not.
Drug overuse (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't (Score:2, Redundant)
call me cynical......
Re:This isn't (Score:3, Insightful)
More than just HIV (Score:5, Insightful)
That Risk is Unfounded (Score:2, Informative)
Therefore, speculating that the same thing that stops viruses will also inhibit yeast or bacteria is erroneous. One consists of live cells--the other merely protiens (and is debated whether or not it is 'alive').
A million AIDS patients is about 1/40th of today's problem. Either way, you're painting a pretty damn good picture if your 'prediction' holds true.
Re:That Risk is Unfounded (Score:3, Informative)
From TFA
emphasis mine. Yeah, in general bacteria and viruses are quite different, in this case it's not a totally off-base speculation.
The Children are Right to Laugh at Me (Score:4, Interesting)
Viruses and bacteria are so different to me, rarely a treatment affects both.
CSA, in fact, stands for Cationic Steroid Antimicrobial [ceragenix.com] and almost every piece of research involving them [irconnect.com] is centered on attacking bacteria.
How come zero hits turn up for Ceragenins when I search for it?
This article didn't include much of the above information and seemed to give a completely different name for CSAs than what they truly are--compound steroids used to primarily combat bacteria.
Re:possible method (Score:3, Informative)
For everyone who had chicken pox as a child, and is dreading an occurrance of shingles later in life (my wife was struck by this after a cortisone shot in her ba
but... (Score:3, Funny)
+5 sarcasm
(+5 funny? +5 sad? +5 satire, cause you know there are people out there that really think that way, freaks)
morale-less? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:but... (Score:4, Funny)
Fast Track (Score:5, Insightful)
Another thing though, is this drug patented, or will this be cheaply available for everyone who needs it, especially AIDS ravaged countried in Africa.
Re:Fast Track (Score:2, Insightful)
In my opinion, this is a big dog & pony show based upon very initial findings.
Re:Fast Track (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I don't have any good numbers right here to back this up, but I don't think that today's "standard track" is even as rigorous as yesteryear's "fast track," and I don't think that "fast tracking" is as uncommon as you might think. The FDA is _woefully_ understaffed and underfunded considering the bulk and weight of what they do. Can anyone close to
Re:Fast Track (Score:5, Funny)
You mispelled "advertising budget."
Re:Fast Track (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, an FDA "fast track" does not mean they will overlook a critical step in the efficacy of the candidate drug.
Re:Fast Track (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is just! wonderful! because we know how so many people know and care who makes MiracleTreat(tm) that they saw on TV. I'm married to a doctor, but I can't name more than 3 or 4 major drug companies, let alone which one makes any given drug.
And the 'obscene profits' lost from it being socialized would be inconsequential to the good will by the people.
I didn't major in economics, so please clarify for me the exchange rate of good will un
Re:Fast Track (Score:3, Interesting)
You've got to understand the economies of scale behind that, though. There's an estimated 250,000 to 350,000 MS cases in the US. Those prices really suck, and I'd hate to be paying them myself, but the reality is that there aren't very many patients to spread the R&D and manufacturing costs across. Contrast with something like Aleve, where you can expect to find a bottle
let the... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:let the... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:let the... (Score:5, Funny)
Just remember Bill Hicks (Score:3, Informative)
Don't break out the champagne just yet (Score:5, Insightful)
While the tests are repeatable, there's a long distance between the test tube and human trials.
Wait for the peer-review (Score:2, Interesting)
"Ceragenix has licensed the exclusive worldwide rights to a patented new class of small molecule compounds from its developer, Professor Paul B. Savage at Brigham Young University."
IF the claims are reproducible, this is a major medical breakthrough and will place Prof. Savage among such immortals as Jonas Salk. However, I'll wait for the independent verif
Future Headlines: (Score:2, Funny)
"HIV/AIDS Extinct After W.H.O. Global Campaign!"
"World Population Skyrockets to 9 Billion in Unprecidented Babyboom!"
Check out the Ceragenix website... (Score:2)
So, it could work agai
Journalist discovers cure for HIV! (Score:4, Insightful)
The headline could've easily read:
"Professor makes steps in war against HIV/AIDS"
"New lead in fight against HIV/AIDS"
Or something along those lines.
I'm actually a BYU student and I'd love to see a terrible disease like HIV/AIDS destroyed as much as the next man - I've met many people suffering from this disease in Latin America and it's horrible to see. I just think the journalist decided to soup up the story by taking what are very preliminary results and making a huge deal of them.
Then again, I do have my fingers crossed...
Science by press release (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why normal people get fed up with science. Their exposure to science is through media stories, PR bullshit like this, which says "Huzzah! Cure for X found!" Later on, we find out that the data is too weak to pass peer-review, that the new compound is toxic, that it only weakly suppresses X in animal models, and that X is not yet, in fact, cured. The real scientists around the world keep at their benchwork, with barely a glance up, steadily and (to the public) inconspicuously advancing our fundamantal understanding of X. But five years later, Mr. Normal Person hears another story like this one and says to himself "Didn't they cure X years ago? What are those ivory-tower leeches spending my $30 billion a year on, anyway?"
hold the champagne a bit longer? (Score:5, Interesting)
You could hope that if you kept your bloodstream flooded with the drug you could nail each new virus as it emerged, but I seem to recall HIV can go directly from cell to cell, without entering the bloodstream at all.
I think our natural immune system kills off viral infections in substantial part by recognizing which of our cells are infected and killing them. That is, it's not just a question of wiping out the free virus, I think.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hold the champagne a bit longer? (Score:3, Informative)
Just one teensy thing they didnt mention.... (Score:4, Interesting)
So just the fact that they've found something that kills AIDS is not particularly interesting.
What's required is to also do tests on cells, then animals, then humans. If they don't immediately keel over, then we can get a tad excited. Until then, it's about as promising a treatment as red fuming nitric acid (a real good AIDS zapper).
My biology teacher... (Score:4, Insightful)
HIV is very easy to kill. Anyone with a bottle of Clorox has a powerful tool for killing all variants of HIV.
The hard part is killing it without killing or damaging other tissues.
Google does not have much to say either (Score:4, Informative)
Link to press releases. Too many press releases. (Score:5, Informative)
It's hard to get that excited about an "in vitro" ("in glass") result. Lots of things work in vitro. There's no indication of whether this works in animals. When they can show it working in mice with human immune systems (there are genetically engineered mice with human immune systems, used for this kind of research), they'll have something. This is a long way from an "AIDS cure".
The reason nobody can find the term "ceragenins" in Google is that compounds of this class are called "cationic steroid antibiotics" in the literature. "Ceragenins" is a PR term.
This company also claims that these compounds can be used to treat cancer, macular degeneration [irconnect.com], and multiple-antibiotic resistant infections [irconnect.com]. They also can be used for skin cream for dry, itchy skin. [irconnect.com] There's an proposed antiterrorism application [irconnect.com], to make smallpox vaccination safer.
However, there are no claims that these compounds improve gas mileage.
Ticker symbol: CGXP.OB [yahoo.com]. Up 122% today on this press release.
Re:Ahh, yes, the cure (Score:2, Funny)
(biowarfare labs don't count)
Re:breakthrough cure (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Less than a decade? (Score:2)
Re:Let's hope. (Score:4, Funny)
NOW!
Re:Let's hope. (Score:4, Funny)
On the necessity of drug patents: (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth is, drug patents are the best case to be made in favor of patents. The only problem is that even that example provides a weak case.
Re:On the necessity of drug patents: (Score:3, Insightful)
I work in pharma. I only read the first article, but it was one of the weakest sets of arguments I have ever heard in my life. It sounds good on the surface, but it is based in neither logic nor sense.
1) The historical argument is baseless one. It argues that the countries with the least Patent protection were the ones that made the most innovations between the mid 180
Re:Mormons controlling the lives of millions... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mormons controlling the lives of millions... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yee-haww! (Score:4, Funny)
Many a slashdotter can now get laid!
I don't think the fear of contracting an STD was preventing that
Re:HIV is a virus (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Because virus replication dumps all the copies *inside* the cell walls. Eventually, the cell gets as full as it can be and pops - releasing all the newly-formed copies. The cell at that point is damaged beyond recovery and dies.
There is nothing to reverse once the infected cells have cycled. The real problem is getting *all* copies of the virus, since it can hide dormant in other types of tissue.
*I am not a doctor, but I play one on dates.*
Re:There will never be an AIDs cure. (Score:3, Interesting)
If leaders of the field are to be believed, anti-retroviral drug regimens can currently eliminate all infected cells in the body save for these latently infected ones. And if developments arise that allow specific
Re:There will never be an AIDs cure. (Score:5, Informative)
As for the blood-brain barrier: the barrier is made by what are called "glia cells." Or more specifically, astrocytes, a type of glia cells. The lipid membranes of these cells only allow certain molecules that are lipid soluble (non-polar) to enter the brain barrier. That is why when you add only one acetyl group to morphine, it becomes heroin and can act on the brain simply because it is non-polar enough to pass through the barrier. Most anti-viral drugs can indeed get through this barrier. Even if that were not the case though, HIV is a blood pathogen and circulation in and out of the brain would likely be enough to contact all HIV molecules with the anti-viral medication. How else would today's HIV cocktails work? HIV does NOT camp out and slowly kill neurons. At all. It cannot attack neurons. Only t-cells. When enough of your t-cells are attacked and killed, you get AIDS.
Yes, plutonium kills people... (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if the AIDS drug is harmful. Like the radiation therapy that we treat cancer with, it just has to be less harmful than the disease it treats.
And existing HIV drugs are already pretty harmful, even though they just contain rather than cure the disease. They're used anyway, because despite the negative effects they're vastly preferable to an uncontained case of AIDS.
Re:An HIV/AIDS Heretic Responds (Score:3, Interesting)
* Pounding the body with massive doses of intoxicants, most notably nitrite poppers (anyone up for gay anal sex?)
* Highly toxic anti-viral medication, such as AZT, which is sure to cause death if ingested.
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