Drug Testing Gone Wrong - Not Over yet?

[mimi-moomoo]

After finding out about the 6 men who tested that drug, I have been desperate to find out what that drug was! I was shocked and horrified to find out by my mum (who is a nurse) that the drug they tested works in the same way as Herceptin! It worries me that this new style of drug is meant to be the way forward. Surely this can't be kept secret from cancer patients.

[asciwhite]

Hi mimi-moomoo, Parexel was the company and then you may want to read the further down questions and answers from laurence2...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=agjkVC0uS2Ug&refer=europe

[jno]

Parexel are just the testing company. It was TeGenero who actually developed the drug. But it won't be something that works the same way as Herceptin - what would be the point? It'll have some significant difference, and probably that will be what caused the trouble.

[morg_monster]

it is similar in so far as they are both 'monoclonal antibodies'. herceptin works in people whose tumours overproduce a particular protein (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 protein or HER2), which encourages the cancer to grow.

the antibodies in herceptin attach themselves to the protein which 'labels' it so that the bodies own immune system targets and destroys these proteins, slowing and stopping cancer growth. It is used in conjunction with other chemotherapies to shrink and hopefully destroy the tumour completely

All monoclonal antibodies are produced to attach to a particular protein which is associated with the problems of a particular disease. Then the human immune system takes over and does the 'hard work' itself, now it has been told by the antibodies what to attack.

If you look in this article in wikipedia, at the bottom are listed all the monoclonal antibodies which have been licensed for human use. As you can see they are used in a variety of conditions.

Certainly these 'new' kinds of drugs work in a different way to say, standard chemotherapies, but that in itself is not necessarily something to worry about. When they get to the bottom of what caused these terrible reactions, they will know whether it is specific to that antibody, or something to watch out for in all of them. The fact is that these drugs can have amazing effects on cancers and other diseases which so far were hard to cure (for example herceptin works in only a subgroup of cancer patients who previously had very poor prognosis). Of course we need to be careful and sadly events like these do contribute to our knowledge of the human body. An unanticipated effect could happen with any new drug, but new classes of drugs do need special care.