login
Become a member
Quick Registration
Full Registration Benefits -
Free Homepages for Doctors
Free Homepages for Hospitals
Free Homepages for Medical Conference
Free Homepages for NGO's
Personal Health Record Creation
Access to all Medical Slides
Access to all Jobs & Products Sale
Scientists Develop Drug to Reverse Muscle Loss Due to Cancer
The molecule blocks the activity of a key muscle-limiting protein called myostatin by acting as a decoy.
Instead of myostatin binding to its normal receptor and triggering muscle wastage, it is 'mopped up' by binding to the decoy molecule instead.
Muscle wasting - called cachexia - is thought to account for about 30 percent of deaths in patients with cancer, but how exactly cachexia is spurred by cancer - or indeed exactly how it leads to a patient's decline - isn't known.
It is thought that several molecular pathways work in tandem, "activating an axis of evil to control muscle mass in a negative way", said H. Q. Han, lead author of the study and scientific director of the metabolic disorders division at Amgen, a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, California.
The researchers wanted to find the dominant pathway responsible for cancer cachexia, and then design a way to block it in order to treat patients.
Several studies have shown that blocking the myostatin pathway can promote muscle growth, said Han, and some have shown that a molecule closely related to myostatin, called activin A, becomes more abundant in patients with some cancers.
"We examined a large random collection of cancer cell lines in vitro, and found that one-third of them secreted large amounts of activin A. This led us to believe that activin A must have some systemic function when overproduced in a cancer setting," Nature quoted Han as saying.
|
|
|
More News on: Drug Toxicity, Cancer and Homeopathy, Signature Drug Toxicity, Cancer Facts, Cancer, Tattoos A Body Art
 Comment & Contribute
|
Medwonders Health Network
- Health News Index
 | Quiz on Cancer Looking for information on cancer? Go through medindia's Cancer quiz. 
|
- News Quick Links
 |
Cancer
Complete Medindia Resources
|
| News Categories: |
| » | Research: Bright Colored Chips can Cut Consumption by Half |
| » | Olympic Athlete's Body Via the 80-10-10 Raw Vegan Diet |
| » | Importance of Canned Foods To Help Tackle IOM Weight Of The Nation Recommendations, Highlights Study |
| » | US Rules Pomegranate Juice Claims Deceptive |
| » | Reducing Entrée Size Could Increase Fruit and Vegetable Intake in Children |
| More Diet News | |
|
