Drugs

Nanosized drug delivery systems take a leap forward

By Dario Borghino

19:03 November 3, 2009 PST

Blood vessels that supply tumors are more porous than normal vessels, makes nanoscale drug delivery systems a particularly attractive prospect. If properly engineered, nanoparticles can in fact get inside a tumor, targeting it precisely and allowing much higher drug dosages as they reduce side effects to a minimum. Two recent studies featured in the latest issue of the journal Nature Materials specifically address these issues and give us promising leads in the fight against cancer. Read More

Gel sensors to detect bomb chemicals and illegal drugs in seconds

By Jeff Salton

03:26 October 12, 2009 PDT

Sensors that quickly detect chemicals used to make bombs are being developed by scientists at Queen’s University, Belfast. The devices will use special gel pads to "swipe" a person or crime scene to gather a sample which is then analyzed by a scanning instrument that can detect the presence of chemicals within seconds, much quicker than current analysis methods. This will allow better, faster decisions to be made in response to terrorist threats. The team is also working on devices that detect illegal drugs and will hopefully be deployed by police as roadside drug "breathalyzers". Read More

Intermittent drug delivery system using magnetism and nanotechnology

By Darren Quick

22:56 September 22, 2009 PDT

Researchers have developed a drug delivery solution that combines magnetism and nanotechnology to produce a method that offers all the advantages of the various previous methods combined. The new method developed by researchers at the Children’s Hospital Boston is able to repeatedly turn dosing on and off, deliver consistent doses and adjust doses according to the patient’s needs. Read More

Targeted chemotherapy - fighting cancer without the side effects

By Loz Blain

02:28 September 14, 2009 PDT

A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, after watching helplessly through his sister's painful and terminal battle with cancer, has spent the last 9 years working on a system that lets doctors cut off blood flow to tumors, isolating them from the rest of the body and allowing the injection of a targeted dose of high intensity chemotherapy. Since the chemo drugs aren't let loose around the rest of the body, the usual devastating side-effects aren't an issue - and the drug dosage at the tumor site can be safely administered at a much higher concentration than usual. The IsoFlow Isolation Catheter has just received FDA marketing approval in the USA. Read More

Potential new drug delivery system

By Sandra Arcaro

21:17 August 31, 2009 PDT

Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a biological mechanism that can act as an entirely new means of drug delivery, carrying with it the potential to make treating illness even more effective. Rather than simply circulating in the bloodstream, the laboratory-developed peptide can deliver nanoparticles directly into tissue. Read More

Possible cure for radiation sickness discovered?

By Darren Quick

23:38 July 21, 2009 PDT

According to a report in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronoth, US and Israeli researchers have developed a drug that offers protection from the damaging effects of radiation sickness. The medication could not only provide effective protection in the event of a nuclear or “dirty bomb” attack, but it could also enable cancer patients to be treated with more powerful doses of radiation. Read More

Biodegradeable nanoparticles promise end to toxic chemotherapy treatments

By Michael Mulcahy

03:23 June 19, 2009 PDT

Researchers at the University of Central Florida have engineered nanoparticles that can target and destroy cancerous cells, delivering a chemotherapeutic drug directly to a tumor without harming healthy cells. This technology could not only mean the end of toxic, whole-body chemotherapy, but also provide a diagnostic role in the early detection of cancer. Read More

Robotic ferret to sniff out hidden drugs, weapons and people

By Michael Mulcahy

03:25 June 15, 2009 PDT

It won’t be cuddly, but it’ll certainly be efficient. The University of Sheffield is developing what it calls a cargo-screening ferret that uses a combination of laser and fiber-optic technology to sniff out the tiniest traces of drugs, weapons, explosives and even illegal immigrants. Read More

Innovative contact lenses look to dispense drugs

By Karen Sprey

00:02 May 26, 2009 PDT

Eye-drops may be a simple way of medicating the eye, but patients don't always get the right dose at the right time. Eyenovations has developed contact lenses that can deliver drugs to the eye in measured doses for a month or longer. The start-up company’s initial focus is developing a lens to help glaucoma patients. However, it believes the technology can be used to help other eye conditions and deliver antibiotics following surgery. Read More

Inherited outlook – can our feelings effect our children?

By Mike Hanlon

02:56 May 18, 2009 PDT

Now here's a frightening thought! Brain chemicals such as endorphins, and drugs, such as marijuana and heroin are known to have significant effects on sperm and eggs, altering the patterns of genes that are active in them. In an article published in the latest issue of the journal Bioscience Hypotheses, Dr Alberto Halabe Bucay of Research Center Halabe and Darwich, Mexico, suggested that the hormones and chemicals resulting from happiness, depression and other mental states can affect our eggs and sperm, resulting in lasting changes in our children at the time of their conception. Bucay suggests that a wide range of chemicals that our brain generates when we are in different moods could affect ‘germ cells’ (eggs and sperm), the cells that ultimately produce the next generation. Such natural chemicals could affect the way that specific genes are expressed in the germ cells, and hence how a child develops. Read More

Drug Testing & Analysis Podcast - a viable test for hGH?

By Mike Hanlon

20:13 February 17, 2009 PST

As the incidence of drugs escalates in 21st century living, their detection and analysis have become increasingly important. Sport, the workplace, crime investigation, homeland security, the pharmaceutical industry and the environment are just some of the high profile arenas in which analytical testing has provided an important investigative tool for uncovering the presence of extraneous substances. Now there's a new scientific magazine entitled Drug Testing and Analysis which will explore the analytical techniques used to determine controlled and potentially controversial compounds. As a promotion for the first issue, publishers Wiley-Blackwell have made public a podcast of an interview with Professor Richard Holt of the University of Southampton on the current state of human Growth Hormone use, abuse and detection in sports. Read More

4D technique promises new insights into brain function

By Darren Quick

19:14 January 22, 2009 PST

January 23, 2009 It’s kind of ironic that the very organ that gives us our intelligence and understanding of the world around us is also the one we understand the least. Now a novel 4D colorimetric technique developed by researchers at Florida Atlantic University, (FAU), that simultaneously maps four dimensions of brain data, (magnitude, 2D of cortical surface and time), in EEG signals could dramatically change the way neuroscientists are able to understand how the brain operates. The technique makes it possible to observe and interpret oscillatory activity of the entire brain as it evolves in time, millisecond by millisecond, so that for the first time, true episodes of brain coordination can be spotted directly in EEG records and carefully analyzed. Read More

HawkEye drug-recognition tool aids law enforcement

By Kyle Sherer

19:21 January 4, 2008 PST

January 5, 2008 The AcuNetx HawkEye law enforcement system, which magnifies and records tell-tale signs of drug intoxication in a suspect’s pupils, has been awarded two separate patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The tool is now being used by highway patrol officers and at sobriety checkpoints across the U.S.A. Read More

Personal therapy sensory device sales to soar

By Emily Clark

17:34 August 21, 2007 PDT

August 22, 2007 As our lives become increasingly busy and stressful people are always on the look out for new ways to relax and find alternatives to drug therapy and conventional Western medicine. The result has been an increase in the number of people engaging in complementary and alternative medicine, which has in turn created a multi-million dollar industry for technologies aimed at delivering personal therapy and relaxation. Read More

Sugar is the key to the nicotine rush according to new research

By Loz Blain

July 27, 2007 Smoking and blood sugar levels are highly interrelated – nicotine causes the body to release satisfying levels of sugar into the bloodstream far faster than eating can, which explains its appetite-inhibiting effects. The results of low blood sugar levels in a quitting nicotine addict are also responsible for some of the most difficult withdrawal symptoms. Now it has been discovered that sugar is also a key element in the chemical reaction that causes a smoker to feel “high”. When nicotine molecules are received by neurotransmitter membranes, it’s sugar molecules that then act as a sort of hinge to open a gate in the cell membrane and send the "nicotine rush" nerve signal onward. Read More

New research reveals the effects of ecstasy on memory function

By Mike Hanlon

June 25, 2007 Research carried out at the University of Hertfordshire (U.K.) has revealed that ecstasy users have significantly impaired memory compared with non-ecstasy users. The research report suggests that the recreational use of ecstasy produces a moderate to large effect on short-term and long-term memory and verbal memory, but not on visual memory. In over three-quarters of ecstasy users, long and short-term verbal memory is below the average of non-ecstasy using controls. Perhaps even more alarming in an era of recreational drug experimentation, the researchers also found that memory impairment was unrelated to the total number of ecstasy tablets consumed. Read More

Recreational Drugs and their level of harm

By Mike Hanlon

March 24, 2007 Just how dangerous are recreational drugs and what’s the most effective way to classify drugs as the basis for law enforcement? With the technologies for creating new substances now well ahead of the law’s ability to even recognise them, it’s clearly time for a new way of doing things. Last year, the UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee tabled a report entitled Drug classification: making a hash of it? which concluded that the current UK classification of drugs into A, B and C classes should be replaced with a new system more closely reflecting the harm they cause. One of the most striking findings of the report was that based on the committee’s assessment of harm, tobacco and alcohol (in red on the chart) would be ranked as more harmful than cannabis, LSD and ecstasy. The report also stated that, on the basis of harm, "alcohol would be classed as B bordering on A, while cigarettes would probably be in the borderline between B and C". Now a leading researcher on substance misuse has expressed concern that the proposed classification regime is too limited in its approach to serve as a basis for changes in the law. Read More

New drugs promise two days without sleep and improved alertness and cognitive powers

By Mike Hanlon

March 5, 2007 Two years ago, we wrote about the “time-shifting” drug, Modafinil that enables you to stay awake for 40+ hours with close to full mental capacity and with few side effects. The drug is a eugeroic and offers improved memory, mood enhancement, improved alertness and cognitive powers, and has a much smoother feel than amphetamines because they work differently. Popular Science is now reporting that we’re just about to see new forms of super eugeroic called armodafinil (Modafinil’s creator Cephalon is awaiting FDA approval for the drug), and a drug code-named CX717 from Cortex. Both drugs promise even longer periods of wakefulness, and in experiments with Ampakine CX717, sleep-deprived rhesus monkeys on the drug often outperformed their own well-rested but undrugged best efforts on mental-performance tests. While these drugs will be marketed to assist people with sleep disorders like narcolepsy, it’s their potential as recreational and workplace performance-enhancing drugs that make them worth watching. The times they are a changing … Read More

The Intellidrug tooth implant

By Mike Hanlon

February 2, 2007 Man has been producing and administering drugs since the neolithic period. Initially these drugs were administered orally mixed with a liquid with the advent of pills making inhalation and the intramuscular or intravenous injection following. These days, the majority of the world’s drugs are administered via pills – pills offer an accurate dosage, but they are so convenient that it’s often possible to forget when you’ve taken them. Chronically ill patients get muddled when constantly having to swallow different numbers of tablets at different times, while those with dementia simply cannot cope. Now EU researchers are developing a better, more accurate and more convenient way – a dental prosthesis capable of releasing accurate dosages into the mucous membranes in the mouth. As it can administer accurate micro amounts over continuous periods, the prosthesis overcomes the peak concentrations that occur with taking pills and even offers the ability to monitor and maintain consistent blood levels of any drug. What makes the Intellidrug prosthesis unique is that, unlike existing drug prostheses and implants, it is small enough to fit into two artificial molars. Inside the patient’s mouth, it is readily accessible and can easily be maintained and refilled. Read More

Discovery opens door for drugs for alcohol addiction

By Mike Hanlon

December 14, 2006 The connection between nicotine and alcohol has been known for some time, though the fact that alcoholism is ten times stronger among smokers than among non-smokers is not as widely known ... and it’s not just because many people smoke at parties. When sober alcoholics are tempted to fall off the wagon, the same receptor in their brain is stimulated as is activated by nicotine. This has been demonstrated in a doctoral dissertation at the Sahgrenska Academy at Göteborg University in Sweden. The discovery may lead to new treatment for alcohol abuse. Read More

The Molecular Condom - vaginal gel releases Anti-HIV drug when exposed to semen

By Mike Hanlon

December 13, 2006 Once likened to “taking a shower with a raincoat on”, the condom may be the safest method of protection during sex, but it significantly detracts from the experience. Last week we featured the spray-on condom designed to offer a better fit but we’re betting that new work being done by University of Utah scientists will get a lot of attention due to its likelihood of overcoming the many shortcomings of the condom. It is in fact a "molecular condom" for use by women. The liquid is vaginally inserted daily and prevents AIDS by turning into a gel-like coating and when exposed to semen, returning to liquid form and releasing an antiviral drug. The ultimate hope for this technology is to protect women and their unborn or nursing children from the AIDS virus, but the molecular condom is five years away from tests in humans and roughly 10 years until it might be in widespread use. Read More

Nanocarriers that can kill tumors with drugs and DNA

By Mike Hanlon

October 2, 2006 Singapore scientists have developed nanoparticles that can carry both small molecular anticancer drugs and nucleic acids simultaneously for improved cancer therapy. The uniqueness of the new technology from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) lies in the design of a special biodegradable carrier (cationic core-shell nanoparticle), which can enclose drug molecules and allow therapeutic nucleic acids to bind onto it. It can efficiently introduce DNA into a cell to be incorporated into its genetic make-up, i.e. induce high gene expression level, especially in both human and mouse breast cancer cell lines, and mouse breast cancer model. The co-delivery of small molecular drugs with nucleic acids can improve gene transfection efficiency, reduce side-effects of these drugs, and achieve the synergistic effect of drug and gene therapy for the more effective treatment of cancer. Read More

Drug-Free Solution from for insomnia sufferers

By Mike Hanlon

February 12, 2006 Approximately 30 million Americans suffer from chronic insomnia. Many of these people do not seek help for their sleep problems, while others rely on medications to help them sleep. Unfortunately, most of these approaches are not long-term solutions. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a State-of-the-Science statement concluding that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective long-term treatments for chronic insomnia. In the past, insomnia sufferers have not had the option of behavioral therapy in the comfort of their homes. A new product called SleepKey is designed to bridge this gap by delivering CBT as a self-help modality. Read More

Potential HIV-AIDS cure - drug found to kill multiple HIV strains

By Mike Hanlon

February 9, 2006 Vanderbilt University, Brigham Young University and Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals have announced that one of a family of compounds, called Ceragenins (or CSAs) shows potent virucidal activity in in vitro laboratory tests against multiple strains of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS. CSAs were invented by Dr. Paul D. Savage of Brigham Young University's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and exclusively licensed to Ceragenix. In data previously presented by Dr. Savage and other researchers, CSAs have been shown to have broad spectrum antibacterial activity. Dr. Derya Unutmaz, Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, tested several CSAs in his laboratory for their ability to kill HIV directly and whilst cautious, acknowledged that CSAs could be the breakthrough technology to combat HIV/AIDS researchers the world has been waiting for. Read More

Modafinil - the time-shifting drug

By Mike Hanlon

The wonders of pharmacology keep appearing regularly, each new drug seemingly too good to be true. In recent times there have been several killer apps for the drug industry – chemical substances that replace depression with a happy disposition or bolster a flagging sex drive to royal command performance (with encore) levels. Prozac and Viagra provided benefits so compelling they have entered everyday language and have a global following. Now there’s another “drug-most-likely-to-succeed” – this one enables you to stay awake for 40+ hours with close to full mental capacity with few side effects Read More