A cancer drug that won't cause hair loss

Good morning friends. I don’t say it’s a good news for all cancer patient, but I may say that cancer patient will not be worry now for that they found a new drug that won’t cause hair loss.

Researchers have developed a way to deliver cancer drugs, which they claim will not cause the usual sickness and hair loss by just using a fat-rich coating.

Until now, treatment of cancer has relied mainly on surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Though these strategies have benefited millions of cancer patients to date, the lack of tumor specificity of some of these agents make patients feel sick or result in significant hair loss.

Now, an international team, led by Queensland University, has developed the way which can specifically shut down cancer-causing genes in tumor cells while sparing normal healthy tissues.

According to lead researcher Sherry Wu, the new method which involves the use of coatings rich in fats, will hasten the application of RNA interference or gene-silencing, a technology which can inactivate individual genes.

Using this technology, the team observed a 70% reduction in tumor size in a cervical cancer mouse model.

"The traditional ways of packaging these drugs into suitable carriers are often complex and labor-intensive. The resulting products are also unstable at room temperature which is obviously not ideal for their clinical use.

"In order to deliver these gene-silencing drugs safely and efficiently into tumor tissues in the body, we have to package them in lipid-rich carriers," Wu said. Added co-researcher Nigel McMillan: "We are excited about our findings and we are currently investigating the feasibility of combining this gene-silencing technology with low dose chemotherapeutic agents in cancer treatments." –The Times of India