This sounds promising too...love, Joicy
Cancer drug is light activated
[05/18/99; Reuters News Service]
NEW YORK, May 17 (Reuters Health) -- A potent cancer-fighting
drug may one day be available in a form that can be activated
by light, thanks to chemists from the United Kingdom and Germany. The
goal is to limit side effects such as nausea and hair loss, by
using laser light to activate the drug only at the tumor site. The
researchers have linked cisplatin -- a chemotherapy drug used
to treat testicular, prostate, ovarian and other types of cancer
-- to platinum. The resulting compound releases the toxic drug,
which interferes with the function of DNA, only when exposed
to light. ``Our long-term aim is to produce metal therapeutic
agents that have a low toxicity, and activate them with a low
intensity light beam from a laser only when they reach the target
site in the body... (namely) cancer cells,'' said Dr. Peter J.
Sadler of the University of Edinburgh in an interview with Reuters
Health. Sadler and colleagues describe their work in a paper published
May 17th in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
The full article can be found at:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/hl/story.html?s=v/nm/19990517/hl/cis11_
1.html
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