Saturday, November 16, 2013

Using Mice To Improve Brain Tumor Research

By Rob Sutter


A report on Medical News Today spoke about how a new therapy was done with mice involved. I think that this is a tremendous way to go about brain tumor research, especially given the idea that these are subjects that have proven useful in the past. If therapies have shown tremendous results for these creatures, it is very likely that they will be able to parlay into the help that humans have. In this particular matter, such results have a chance of occurring.

It's apparent that the John Hopkins University School of Medicine has been able to utilize a particular drug, bringing it into strong effect. The drug was referred to as 5-azacytidine, which is something that could prove useful in brain tumor research given the fact that it has been utilized in the past. More specifically, it had an effect on pre-leukemia, so it's clear that there's reliability to be seen. It's just a matter of seeing if it will play into the focus of organizations the likes of Voices against Brain Cancer.

Gliomas - seen as the most common and rapidly growing tumors in the brain - are going to be helped thanks to this drug. In particular, the drug will be able to target the mutation referred to simply as IDH1. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what exactly this entails, it is an alteration that is seen in 70 to 80 percent of all lower-grade tumors in patient. This mutation will make it impossible for the body to utilize protein for the sake of transitioning glucose into energy.

The study went on for a period of 14 weeks and the impact of 5-azacytidine had proven itself to be, to say the least, beneficial. Tumor growth in mice went down tremendously and a relapse did not occur since that point. It didn't even stop seven weeks after the use of the drug in question had been stopped. I do not think that you need me to tell you that this is extremely beneficial for those who have seen difficulties in terms of therapies and tumor regression.

Researchers typically do not expect to see tumor regression, which speaks volumes about how strong this study was in the realm of brain tumor research. These findings could prove useful in the future if the mice utilized have seen positive results. Is it possible that humans will be able to benefit from such processes in the long term as well? I like to think that this will be the case but it is just a matter of time as potential work will be gone about.




About the Author:





No comments :

Post a Comment