Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive brain disorder that gradually destroys a person’s memory and ability to learn, reason, make judgments, communicate and carry out daily activities. As Alzheimer’s progresses, individuals may also experience changes in personality and behavior, such as anxiety, suspiciousness or agitation, as well as delusions or hallucinations. Although there is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s, new treatments are on the horizon as a result of accelerating insight into the biology of the disease. Research has also shown that effective care and support can improve quality of life for individuals and their caregivers over the course of the disease from diagnosis to the end of life.

The greatest known risk factor for Alzheimer’s is increasing age. Most individuals with the disease are 65 or older. The likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s doubles about every five years after age 65. After age 85, the risk reaches nearly 50 percent.

Most researchers say a protein called beta-amyloid is at the root of Alzheimer’s. The protein appears to build up into plaques in the brain and progressively kill neurons, or nerve cells, in a process known as the “amyloid cascade.” Many of the drugs being studied aim to interrupt this cascade.

Following links are helpful to know more about this disease.

Alzheimer’s Association

National Institute of Aging

Medline Plus

Developments to watch:

Scientists are exploring several promising avenues in drug research that could strengthen the battery of weapons used to slow the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease. A handful of drugs — some originally approved for other diseases — are showing some success in clinical trials at slowing the cognitive decline that is the hallmark of Alzheimer’s. A few, including a prostate-cancer drug, a diabetes drug and a medicine derived from an old class of anti-inflammatory drugs, are in late-stage trials. Their makers say they expect to seek regulatory approval for the treatment of Alzheimer’s within a few years. Other compounds, including cholesterol-lowering statins and antibodies that bolster the immune response against the disease, are also showing promise.

If approved for Alzheimer’s, the drugs could be a huge breakthrough because they seek to modify the brain processes that cause Alzheimer’s, even though those processes aren’t fully understood. In contrast, none of the currently approved medicines attack the underlying mechanisms of the disease, offering only limited relief from some symptoms. The four drugs currently approved for Alzheimer’s — Aricept, Exelon, Razadyne and Namenda — are a huge business.

Alone, sales of Aricept, co-marketed in the U.S. by Pfizer Inc. and Eisai Inc., totaled $1.06 billion in the year ended March 31. But typically, patients gain only modest cognitive improvement for less than 18 months. Then, they start to deteriorate again.

Some of the most promising results to date involve Flurizan, which is derived from an anti-inflammatory and is being tested by Myriad Genetics Inc. The drug targets an enzyme, called gamma secretase, that is believed to play a role in the build-up of amyloid. The company is scheduled to finish its final U.S. study in the spring of 2008, and hopes to apply to the Food and Drug Administration that summer, says Executive Vice President Bill Hockett.

Some researchers think that the best approach may turn out to be a cocktail of different compounds. Different drugs may also work better for different patients, depending on gender and genetics. For example, leuprolide, the prostate-cancer drug that is being tested in Alzheimer’s patients by Voyager Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., has appeared more effective in women than in men. Leuprolide, approved as Lupron for prostate cancer, targets luteinizing hormone, a pituitary hormone believed to promote the production of beta-amyloid.

The diabetes drug Avandia is believed to play a role in how brain cells metabolize glucose, a process that GlaxoSmithKline researcher Allen Roses believes will eventually prove to be the culprit in Alzheimer’s. Dr. Roses says he is “optimistic” that Phase III trials now getting under way will pave the way for approval of the drug for Alzheimer’s. Those trials will enroll about 2,800 patients in the U.S. and 32 other countries, according to a Glaxo spokesman.

Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are also showing some promise. Through the National Institute on Aging, the NIH has funded a recently completed study to test whether the statin Zocor, from Merck & Co., can stall Alzheimer’s in patients with normal cholesterol levels. “The idea is that lipid lowering seems to also lower the amount of amyloid in the brain,” says Mary Sano, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. In addition, Pfizer is recruiting patients for a study of Lipitor in Alzheimer’s patients.

While these drugs are already on the market for other conditions, doctors and researchers say it would be unwise to prescribe or use any medicines “off-label” for Alzheimer’s. The patients who are taking them now are in the controlled environment of a clinical trial with heavy oversight, researchers note, and problems could still crop up, even during the last rounds of testing.

New Drugs for Alzheimer Disease:

• Researchers also tout Alzhemed, a drug being developed by a Canadian company, Neurochem Inc., in a Montreal suburb. In an earlier study, patients with mild Alzheimer’s remained stable for 20 months. Some patients who participated in an extended study have been getting the medication for three years and “have stayed the same,” says spokeswoman Lise Hebert.

• Some researchers are looking at ways to stimulate the immune system to fight the disease. Researchers at Eli Lilly & Co. are in the early stages of trials of an antibody that binds to beta-amyloid and prevents it from building up. That study is still recruiting patients. Lilly investigators are further along in trials of a drug that moderates the activity of an enzyme that appears to promote the production of amyloid, says company researcher Eric Siemers.

• Wyeth, Madison, N.J., is working with Elan Pharmaceuticals Inc. to develop an injectable protein that would prevent the build-up of beta amyloid.

Update on Dec 18, 2006 — Detect Alzheimer Early:

The amount of cholesterol in the blood is usually a good indicator of a person’s risk of suffering heart disease. Now scientists are making headway in developing a similar test to detect the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Over the past two years, rival scientists in the U.S. and Europe have identified a series of proteins, known as biomarkers, whose presence in blood or spinal fluid may indicate whether a patient has Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. In the short term, that could lead to better and earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s patients. In the longer term, it could yield more-effective drugs and even reduce the cost of developing them.

The search for Alzheimer’s biomarkers “is a hot field, and the goal is a very big one,” says Simon Lovestone, a professor of geriatric psychiatry at King’s College London, who led a team that recently found two such biomarkers in blood. “It’s a step along the way to better treatment.”

Both the European Commission and the U.S. National Institutes of Health are funding large-scale projects on Alzheimer biomarkers. In a new paper appeared in the Annals of Neurology, researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York describe how they have identified 23 biomarker proteins for Alzheimer’s in a trial of nearly 100 patients. The results need to be replicated in a larger clinical trial — and plenty of challenges remain before the findings can become the basis for a reliable clinical test.

Still, the study is a “good start,” says Susan Molchan, who leads a new $60 million project at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging, which is also seeking to identify Alzheimer’s biomarkers. “We want to identify patients earlier and treat them earlier,” she adds. Dr. Molchan has read the Annals of Neurology paper but wasn’t involved in the research.

Diagnosing Alzheimer’s can be tricky, especially in the early course of the illness when many of its symptoms — such as mild forgetfulness — resemble those of other maladies, such as depression or stress, or the natural aging process. That’s why most neurologists can only diagnose “possible” or “probable” Alzheimer’s. The only foolproof way to verify the existence of the disease is to study the brain after death.

A biomarker-based test holds the promise of an early diagnosis for Alzheimer’s. It would enable patients to be treated at the initial stages of their illness, when they are most likely to respond. Families would also have the chance to discuss care options with patients while they are still able to participate in the decisions.

A biomarker protein is a telltale chemical fingerprint that can be detected in parts of the body, such as blood or spinal fluid. If biomarkers for Alzheimer’s are found in a person’s spinal fluid, for example, they can confirm a diagnosis of the disease. Better yet, “if you know how these markers change as the disease progresses, you might be able to alter them” with a drug, thus stalling or reversing the course of the illness, says Norman Relkin, a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and a co-author of the latest study.

For several years, doctors in European countries — especially Sweden — have extracted spinal fluid from symptomatic patients and tested it for three biomarker proteins that appear to indicate the existence of Alzheimer’s. At the same time, they use brain scans and other tests to exclude other cognitive disorders.

In February 2006, Swedish scientists published a five-year study in the journal Lancet Neurology, describing how the relative progression to Alzheimer’s disease in patients with mild cognitive impairment was significantly increased if their spinal fluid contained abnormal amounts of the same three biomarker proteins, known as b-amyloid, total tau and phosphorylated-tau.

In October 2006, researchers from King’s College London and their collaborators, Proteome Sciences PLC, said they had discovered 15 protein biomarkers associated with Alzheimer’s in patients’ blood.

Two of these proteins, involved in an inflammation response, may play an especially significant role in the disease, the researchers say. Their findings, based on blood tests from 500 U.K. patients, appeared in the journal Brain. The next step: The scientists hope to verify the data in a larger trial and see whether the two proteins can be used to predict how Alzheimer’s disease progresses.

Researchers in the U.S. are also involved in the quest for Alzheimer biomarkers. In February 2005, scientists at Northwestern University claimed that they had become one of the first to detect a significant biomarker for the disease in living patients. They found tiny amounts of a toxic protein, ADDL, in the spinal fluid of living Alzheimer’s patients. Previous research had suggested that ADDL may accumulate at the beginning of the illness and block memory function. The findings appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Nanosphere Inc., a biotechnology firm in Northbrook , Ill. , hopes to use the results to develop a diagnostic test.

The new paper appeared in the Annals of Neurology may be the farthest-reaching one so far. Researchers compared 2,000 proteins in patients with Alzheimer’s and in those without. As a result, they homed in on 23 proteins that seemed strongly associated with the disease.

Heartburn is so common that most people don’t worry about it. But, they should. There is a growing uneasiness in the medical community about the hidden dangers of heartburn. The condition is linked with debilitating sleep problems, chronic cough and even asthma. Worse, years of chronic hearburn can turn deadly, leading to an aggressive esophageal cancer that few survive. That cancer typically kills its victims within a year of diagnosis.

Read more about this in the following web pages:

U.S. Preventive Services Task force

American Cancer Society

Harvard Center for Disease Prevention

If you are suffering from heartburn, talk to your doctor. It might be that spicy chicken curry you took few hours ago or it could be something more serious. Diet changes and life-style changes will help a lot. For serious conditions, Antireflux surgery could help. Following web pages provide more useful information.

National Heartburn Alliance

From about.com

WebMd articles about Heartburn

There is a simple way to tackle the heartburn. Drink one teaspoon of Ginger juice every morning on an empty stomach. Wait for 20 minutes before eating/drinking anything else. Do this every day, you will see very good improvement. If you do see improvement, drop us a note.

Diabetes is the single most important metabolic disease which can affect nearly every organ system in the body. It has been projected that 300 million individuals worldwide would be affected with diabetes by the year 2025. The reasons for this escalation are due to changes in lifestyle, people living longer than before and low birth weight could lead to diabetes during adulthood. Diabetes related complications are coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, neuropathy, retinopathy, nephropathy, etc. People with diabetes are 25 times more likely to develop blindness, 17 times more likely to develop kidney disease, 30-40 times more likely to undergo amputation, two to four times more likely to develop myocardial infarction and twice as likely to suffer a stroke than non-diabetics.

Main key to handle Diabetes is to change your lifestyle. Diets, regular physical activity and weight reduction will help you to prevent diabetes.

Following sites will give you more information about Diabetes and how to handle it.

• American Diabetes Association
• Heart of Diabetes
• Diabetes India Association
• Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation – For Kids
• Eat Right
• Harvard Nutrition Source – This is a site run by Harvard University. It gives you details about Diet and Nutrition, very informative
• Total Body Makeover – For your exercises
• WebMD
• Ediets
• 3fatchicks – Name sounds funny, but this is a useful site for ladies (and for guys too)

Developments to watch:

1. One of the burdens diabetes patients face is the constant need to monitor their blood sugar by pricking their fingers. There will be a painless alternative in few years.  Oculir, San Diego, CA, USA based company is developing a monitor that reads blood sugar levels by inspecting the tiny blood vessels of the eye, without ever touching the eyeball! The monitor works by bouncing a harmless beam of infrared light off the white of the eye. Although invisible, the spectrum of light in the probe is just the right wavelength to interact with glucose molecules in blood flowing through tiny vessels in the thin membrane covering the eye. According to this company, the light reflected back is proportional to the amount of glucose in the blood. If everything goes well, commercial version of this device could go on sale in 2009.
2. Medtronic, Minneapolis, US, created a system called Paradigm. This includes a monitor taped to a patient’s abdomen that continuously reads his or her blood glucose and transmits the data to a pump, which beeps or vibrates when blood sugar drops to a dangerous level. Patients adjust the pump, worn like a pager, to administer insulin into a port in the body. The system eliminates the need for repeated needle sticks to test blood and to inject insulin.  This is a good development in the battle of diabetes. FDA approved this system.
3. For the first time, researchers are closing in on ways to prevent or at least limit  the devastating effects of type 1 diabetes. By using new treatments, including drugs normally  given to organ-transplant patients, doctors hope to stem the progress of the disease. If proven  effective, the new therapies could offer one of the first major advances in treatment since injectable insulin was first made available in 1922. In one clinical trial conducted by an international  network of researchers known as Type 1 Diabetes Trialnet, patients diagnosed with diabetes within past three months are given two immunosuppressant drugs: Mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) and Daclizumab  (DZB) from Roche AG. The hope is that the drugs will prevent diabetics’ immune systems from attacking  and killing insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas, just as they prevent a transplant patient from rejecting a new heart or kidney. For more information on this trial and similar trials visit   www.newonsetdiabetes.org and www.diabetestrialnet.org.
4. Researchers for years have been looking for a substitute for insulin shots to control diabetes, and several leading pharmaceutical companies are in the process of developing their own inhalable alternative. Pfizer Inc. of New York, USA and Nektar Therapeutics, of San Carlos, Calif., USA jointly developed a powdered, inhalable insulin designed to replace shots for the treatment of diabetes. This powdered insulin comes with a specialized inhaler that can disperse the powder effectively inside the lungs. No more needles and pain. This product, known as Exubera, was approved in January 2006 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and by the European Commission. Exubera is currently available in Germany, Ireland, U.K and U.S.
5. There also appears to be a link between gum infections and diabetes, as people with diabetes are more likely to have periodontal disease, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers are now looking into whether there’s a two-way connection between the conditions to see if diabetes can be better controlled through treatment of gum disease.
6. On October 17, 2006 FDA approved Merck & Co.’s drug Januvia to treat Type 2 diabetes. Januvia is the first in a new class of diabetes medicine known as DPP-4 inhibitors. The drug works by enhancing the body’s own ability to lower blood sugar, or glucose, when it is elevated. Swiss-based Novartis AG has a similar drug, Galvus, which is awaiting FDA approval. DPP-4 inhibitors work in a different manner than blood-glucose lowering drugs currently on the market, including sulfonylurea drugs, which stimulate the pancreas to release insulin, and metformin, which works on the liver to reduce blood sugar.

New tests for Lung Cancer

The latest advance in personalized medicine promises to benefit thousands of lung-cancer patients. Under the current standard of treatment, people in the early stages of lung cancer undergo surgery to remove the tumor, followed by observation. Chemotherapy isn’t offered, nor covered by most health insurers. Yet, for a third of these people, the disease will return and is fatal.

Now, Duke University medical researchers say they have devised a test that predicts, with up to 90% certainty, which early-stage patients would suffer a recurrence. Those patients could then be given chemotherapy. In a study published in New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers say that the test, involving microscopic examination of thousands of individual genes, could save lives by bringing chemotherapy to patients who are currently advised against it.

Later this year, Duke will begin a clinical trial, funded by the NIH, of 1,200 early-stage lung-cancer patients in the United States and Canada.

The researchers’ findings herald the significant shift in cancer treatment known as personalized medicine, in which doctors tailor treatment to the genetic characteristics of each person’s cancer.

Joan Schiller, chief of the division of hematology oncology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and the president of the National Lung Cancer Partnership, an advocacy group founded by physicians and researchers, called the Duke findings “a sign that we may be getting closer to personalized medicine where we look at a tumor and based on the molecular characteristics decide upon patients’ treatment.” She isn’t connected to the Duke study.

Assessing Breast Cancer Risk

Breast cancer strikes one in eight women. Mammograms or manual breast exams can find a tumor while it is still small and chances of survival are greatest. The new device aims to take early diagnosis one step further: predicting elevated risk before cancer even exists.

The “Halo system” device, which recently went on sale to gynecologists from NeoMatrix LLC of Irvine, Calif., is intended for use in addition to regular mammograms. The device works by extracting fluid from the nipple, using a warming technique and small suction cups. The fluid, called nipple aspirate, is then sent to a laboratory to be tested for “atypical,” or abnormal, cells. These cells are benign, but are believed by many scientists to be a precursor to cancer.

Doctors say the procedure is somewhat uncomfortable but not painful. However, aspirate can be extracted in only about 40% to 50% of women. It’s particularly hard to get adequate fluid in women over 55 — so the test is less likely to be useful in that group.

The company estimates that atypical cells will be found in about 1% of the total number of women who undergo testing. NeoMatrix, citing published literature from independent sources, says that the presence of such cells in nipple fluid increases the risk of breast cancer as much as fivefold. If a woman also has a family history of breast cancer, NeoMatrix says, the presence of atypical cells gives her as much as 20 times the average risk.

However, Mayo Clinic scientist Lynn C. Hartmann, a well-known researcher in the field, says those estimates of increased risk are too high — particularly in women with family history.Her work, including a study of 9,087 women published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, has found that family history doesn’t add additional risk of cancer in women who have atypical cells.

The potential of nipple aspirate in assessing breast-cancer risk has long been recognized, but the test isn’t widely performed in part because of the difficulty in extracting the fluid. Some women at high risk for the disease have chosen to get a minor surgery called ductal lavage, in which a catheter is inserted into the milk ducts to collect a cell sample.

NeoMatrix’s test is noninvasive and takes only about five minutes, compared with 40 minutes or more for ductal lavage. If you test positive, NeoMatrix suggests you be seen at a center that specializes in breast cancer. Your options would include getting more frequent mammograms than normal, and possibly adding breast MRI or ultrasound, which can find tumors missed by standard mammograms. You could also consider taking preventive medications such as the anticancer drug tamoxifen.

Victor G. Vogel, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh , says the new test is a good idea for women at increased risk for breast cancer, including those whose mother or sister had the disease and women who have never had children, or had their first child after the age  of 30.

In women without other significant risk factors, Dr. Vogel says, the test may not be needed since a positive result is less likely to spur preventive action.

You may also want to visit www.yourdiseaserisk.com that was created by the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention, stands out as one of the best health-oriented sites on the Web. Most Internet sites give users general health information, but the Harvard site has found a way to provide customized information to help patients better understand their personal health and risk for disease.

More important, it also spits out a tailored action plan on ways to lower risk for health problems.  It does all this using colorful graphics and charts that allow users to grasp how their health  stacks up against the rest of the population and how small changes in lifestyle can lower their health risks.

Another site, www.cancer.gov/bcrisktool from the National Cancer Institute, allows women to calculate their risk for breast cancer. The downside of the NCI calculator is that it uses only a few basic questions and doesn’t include the variety of factors that influence breast-cancer risk.

Update on Dec 18, 2006 — Earlier Treatment may help Prostate Cancer:

Older men with early stage, localized prostate cancer live longer if the disease is treated with radiation or surgery instead of simply waiting and watching as is often recommended, a study said.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia said they found that patients whose cancer was treated had a 31% lower risk of death during the 12 years they were tracked than those who did nothing.

Even though the disease is considered a slow-developing one, the study “suggests a reduced risk of mortality associated with active treatment for low and intermediate risk prostate cancer in the elderly … population examined,” concluded the report published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The report was based on the medical records of more than 44,000 men 65 to 80 who were diagnosed with the disease in 1991 to 1999 and who had survived more than a year past diagnosis. The study ended at the end of 2002. In an editorial in the same issue commenting on the study, Mark Litwin and David Miller, two physicians at the University of California, Los Angeles, noted that the  findings are preliminary.

Update on Dec 19, 2006 — Abortion Drug RU-486 blocks breast cancer in Mice:

Scientists used the abortion drug RU-486 to keep tumors at bay in mice bred with a gene that makes them susceptible to breast cancer.

While no one is suggesting women use the abortion pill that way, the provocative experiment helped illustrate how the notorious breast cancer gene BRCA1 does its dirty work, by spurring a
hormone called progesterone that RU-486 happens to block.

If researchers could create a safer hormone blocker, it might offer a long-awaited alternative for women with the bad gene. They have few good options today to prevent breast cancer.

“All of us have to be cautious,” said cell biologist Eva Lee of the University of California , Irvine , who led the research published in the journal Science. “But I do think if there is a better
anti-progesterone available, hopefully there will be other options in the future for these women.”

Cancer specialists not involved with the experiment praised the work, even as they cautioned women not to get their hopes up yet.

“This is an avenue worth pursuing on a research level,” said Dr. Claudine Isaacs, an oncologist at Georgetown University Hospital who works closely with carriers of BRCA1 and a related
gene. “This is work in a mouse,” she said. “It’s clearly too early to start recommending use of this agent.”

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society’s deputy medical chief, said researchers and patients will “take interest in this topic and explore it further.” He called the paper “elegant
research,” but stressed “it would not be appropriate in any way, shape or form that women start taking RU-486 for this purpose.”

Long-term use of RU-486 could suppress the immune system and cause other side effects.

Some 212,000 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. Only 5% to 10% will have a hereditary form. Women who inherit mutations in the BRCA1 gene are at far greater
risk of cancer than the average woman. By age 70, more than half of those gene carriers develop either breast or ovarian cancer.

Their options today include: frequent cancer screening, in hopes of catching it early; removing both breasts while they are still healthy; taking the anticancer drug tamoxifen,
which helps some women; or removing the ovaries before age 50, cutting the risk of both cancers.

These anxiety-provoking options are propelling the push to determine exactly how BRCA1 triggers tumors, so doctors and women have better options.

Particularly puzzling, BRCA1 mutations occur in every cell of the body, raising questions about why the defect would trigger cancer just in reproductive organs.

In their research, Ms. Lee and colleagues created mice whose mammary glands only harbor the BRCA1 mutation.

The scientists found that the bad gene caused breast tissue to have too-high levels of progesterone receptors. That means the hormone sticks around longer than it should, in turn
sparking excess cell growth. In fact, the mice’s breast tissue looked like it should have during pregnancy, when temporarily high progesterone levels cause breast growth as the gland prepares
to make milk.

The final evidence came from RU-486, also called mifepristone. It causes human abortions by suppressing progesterone, a hormone crucial to sustaining pregnancy.

Instead of a human pill, Ms. Lee implanted some of the cancer-prone mice with an RU-486 pellet designed to slowly emit the drug into their bodies over two months.
By eight months of age, each of the untreated gene-defective mice had developed tumors. But none of the mice given RU-486 had developed tumors by 12 months, when the study stopped.

Ms. Lee cautioned that RU-486 isn’t a good candidate for such long-term use in people. She said more targeted progesterone blockers already are being developed.

Update on Dec 19, 2006:

Two patients taking a drug commonly used to treat cancer and rheumatoid arthritis died from a rare brain infection, the Food and Drug Administration of U.S. and the drug’smakers warned yesterday, raising questions for a promising drug.

The patients who died were receiving the drug, Rituxan, as a treatment for lupus. Rituxan, sold by Genentech Inc. and Biogen Idec Inc., isn’t approved for lupus, though doctors are
allowed to prescribe medications as they see fit. The patients contracted a viral brain infection known as progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML.

In a preliminary public safety alert to doctors, the FDA warned that PML may be a risk for patients taking Rituxan for any reason, and they should carefully
watch patients taking the drug. In a letter to health-care professionals, Genentech said that doctors prescribing Rituxan should be on alert, particularly in patients
with lupus or certain cancers.

Update on May 29, 2007: Test for metastatic cancers:

Cancer patients often don’t realize the disease has spread until a secondary tumor grows big enough to show up on a x-ray or CT scan. Battelle Medical Device Solutions now has a
patented test that could detect a recurrence much sooner using only a routine blood sample. Battelle says its approach, developed by Thomas Haubert of its Columbus (Ohio) research lab and Dr.
Stephen Wardlaw of Yale University School of Medicine, can find a single cancerous cell in as little as 10-cc’s of blood. The system doses the sample with a fluorescent tag that sticks
to abnormal cells, which are then separated out in a centrifuge for identification.

Update on Sep 23, 2007: Promising test for Lung cancers:

A simple blood test that identifies early lung cancer before it has had a chance to spread could save lives by alerting doctors to the need for treatment, researchers say. The blood test looks for a telltale protein that is linked to tumour growth. In preliminary tests the process correctly identified 99% of patients with lung cancer at various stages of development.

Mark Semenuk, a researcher at Panacea Pharmaceuticals in Gaithersburg, Maryland, US, says a simple blood test could provide a much simpler and more effective way to screen people at high risk of developing lung cancer, such as smokers.

Semenuk and colleagues developed the test, which measures levels of a protein called human aspartyl beta-hydroxylase (HAAH) in the blood. If a person has more than 3 nanograms of HAAH per millilitre of blood, that is considered to be abnormal. This would give the clues to the doctors about the cancer.

Read more about this in New Scientist.

Update on Dec 18, 2008: Prevention of cancer using proteins

Ovarian-cancer patients who have low levels of two proteins die much sooner than women with high levels of the proteins, a finding that researchers say is a major development in the search for new treatments for the often deadly and hard-to-detect disease.

The proteins identified by researchers at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston play a key role in two types of RNA interference, which is the mechanism by which genes are turned on or off. By targeting that process, researchers hope they will be able to silence the cancer-causing genes. In addition, measuring protein levels may eventually allow doctors to better tailor treatment plans.

In a study published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, the Anderson researchers said women with high levels of proteins known as Dicer and Drosha survived four times as long — or eight years — as women who had low levels of the proteins. The researchers said it is likely that low levels of the proteins allow some genes to continue functioning when they should be silenced.

Nov 9, 2006: Cell Transplants help Blind Mice See!

Scientists have used cell transplants to restore some vision in blind mice, the best evidence yet that similar techniques could one day treat people with degenerative eye disease.

In their experiments, researchers extracted light-sensitive photoreceptor cells from newborn mice and transplanted them into the retinas of mice with eye diseases. Tests showed that the previously blind mice could sense light and that they had some vision. The results appeared in the journal Nature.

Photoreceptor cells are the focus of attention because they are destroyed in some common causes of blindness, including retinal and macular degeneration, that affect millions of people. Past attempts have used retinal transplants with embryonic stem cells, master cells that can eventually turn into all other types of cells in the body. Those attempts failed because the transplanted embryonic cells didn’t turn into well-functioning photoreceptors. Experiments with adult stem cells also haven’t been particularly successful.

“We’ve shown for the first time that photoreceptor transplantation can be done,” said Robert MacLaren, an eye surgeon at the University College London and at Moorfields Eye Hospital , London , and an author of the Nature study. However, he cautioned, “there are still many steps before we do this in patients.” Other authors included researchers from the University of Michigan.

The procedure isn’t immediately applicable to humans because it would require extracting photoreceptor cells from a human fetus. But the authors of the paper are hopeful that they can build on the research to create vast quantities of photoreceptor cells in the lab for transplants into patients.

When it comes to treating disease with stem cells, retinal-cell transplants hold special promise. One reason is that even when photoreceptors are destroyed, the rest of the wiring to the brain initially stays intact. So transplanted cells would need to bridge only one short connection to restore vision.

The latest study suggests that it may be more effective to transplant somewhat mature cells. Thus, researchers in the latest experiments studied “precursor” cells which are programmed to be — but haven’t yet become — mature and functioning photoreceptors. They experimented with precursors that turn into rods, which are photoreceptors that detect dark and light.

After being extracted from newborn mice, the precursor rod cells were transplanted into other mice that were missing the rods in their retinas. The cells correctly developed into rod photoreceptors and properly connected to nerve cells that carry visual signals to the brain. Tests indicated that the mice had some restored vision, though it wasn’t clear how much.

“It may be that the specific time at which the specific cell is harvested will make all the difference in its potential” for transplant therapy, Thomas Reh, a scientist at the University of Washington , wrote in an article accompanying the Nature study. Prof. Reh isn’t an author of the Nature paper.

Dec 19, 2006: RNA interference technology:

Sirna is developing drugs using so-called RNA interference technology. There are at least a half-dozen biotechnology companies developing drugs that silence genes by interfering with the messenger-carrying RNA, a technique discovered by this year’s Nobel winners, Andrew Fire of Stanford University and Craig Mello at the University of Massachusetts.

There are eight U.S and European patents specifically related to the technology. The closest drug Sirna has near market is for the treatment of the eye disorder, macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. However, that drug is still at least two years from regulatory approval and probably further out because its experimental treatment will require the successful completion of at least two costly, time-consuming and large-scale human trials testing for safety and effectiveness.