Cancer has been one of the highly researched against diseases , with researchers trying hard , with the most ingenious methods tried till date, to try to find some sort of cure for this disease... a cure that has actually a curing rate higher than that of luck, and which causes more good than harm , seeing the consequences of chemo and radiotherapy.Also most therapies are for the common cancers in initial stages, like breast cancer, etc, but are totally useless in case of other cancers, some of which are rare.
For a long time now, researchers have been trying to identify the the various genetic anomalies , which cause cancer formation , and had come across what Dr Gary Gilliland of Merck call "the cell's angel of death" - a gene named p53- which they had found to be inactivated by some proteins binding to it, causing cell death, or apoptosis to not occur.
Now, three pharmaceutical firms, Merck, Roche and Sanofi, are racing against each other to test for the efficacy of a new compound that Dr Debussche's team struck upon at University of Michigan in 2009, which showed remarkable results in mice, clearing of tumors in a week , after just one dose. This compound manages to cleave the protein bound to the gene and causes cell to 'self destruct'.
This trial is first of its kind, as it is targeting many types of cancers at once, and not the usual single target trials. Merck has started testing for the efficacy of dosages and is doing trials on patients of acute mylogenous lukemia.
If the trials fail to show any effect, they will have to reluctantly admit defeat. But still, there is great hope for the patients of rare types of cancers , for whom there are no cures due to unprofitablity of the research for the various pharmaceutical firms , for a better and safer cure in the future. Even if this fails, at least the idea based on which the research was going on can be taken on to find other more efficient cures
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