The Secret Of Cancer Treatments
Many volunteers world-wide commit themselves to raising funds for cancer research and cancer charities. Many hundreds of thousands more work in the industry as carers, or researching, prescribing, identifying and manufacturing drugs. Huge companies spend fortunes on cancer research. After so long and so many billions spent what exactly has cancer research revealed?
There have been regular breakthroughs in our comprehension of cancer, but little progress in its treatment. Modern research into cancer began in the 1940's and 50's when scientists isolated substances that killed cancer cells growing in a petri dish, or leukaemia cells in laboratory mice. Early successes in chemotherapy set the pace and received much media exposure, despite the fact that they only applied to 5% of cancer treatments at most.
Serving humanity by solving its major diseases has a celebrity status, there's a lot of kudos and an air of Hollywood involved with such things. Cancer research is high profile activity and every now and after that a scientific treatment is discovered that gains wide recognition, such as the HPV-16 trial, but it only applies itself to the treatment of a small number of cancers. Mass-media hype is included in the problem of how we see cancer. Early discoveries set up an expectation that there was a cure-all treatment, a 'magic bullet' that could make its discoverer famous by curing cancer across the world. The idea stems in part from aspirin, the original bullet that magically finds its way to the anguish and diminishes it.
In the 1950's and 60's huge and expensive research projects were set up to test every known substance to determine if it effected cancer cells. You could remember the discovery of the Madagascar Periwinkle (Catharansus Roseus), which revealed alkaloids (vinblastine and vincristine) which are still employed in chemotherapy today. Taxol, a remedy for ovarian and breast cancer originally came from the Pacific Yew tree. A therapy click for info testicular cancer and small-cell lung cancer called 'Etoposide' was produced from the May apple. In 'Plants Used Against Cancer' by Jonathan Hartwell over 3,000 plants are identified from medical and folklore sources for the treatment of cancer, about 50% of which have been shown to have some impact on cancer cells in a test tube.
When these plants are made into synthetic drugs, single chemicals are isolated and also the rest of the plant is normally thrown away. The medicinally active molecules are extracted from the plant and modified until they can be chemically unique. Then the compound is patented, given a brand name and tested.
In the first phase it will generally be tested on animals, the other phase will decide dosage levels and in phase 3 it's tested on people. By the time it's approved through the Federal Drugs Authority (in U.S.A.) or even the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulation Agency (M.H.R.A.) in Britain, the development costs for a new drug can reach five hundred million dollars, which eventually has to be recouped from the consumer.
