Aussie press picking up the p53 story Also an au
Post# of 72440
Also an audio link
Good to see the PR today re the upcoming FDA meeting on Ovarian -- other Kevetrin trials to come.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/1...337887.htm
Maybe someone w/an account can tweet the popular Dr Karl re Kevetrin... He has 276k followers
https://mobile.twitter.com/DoctorKarl
http://drkarl.com
Another recent Land Down Under story on p53
http://m.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/cance...7573576200
EXCERPT
A RANGE of drugs already on the market could help repair the human body’s natural cancer-fighting system, thanks to a breakthrough by Melbourne researchers.
Scientists from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre are trialling new ways of protecting a protein crucial in stopping cancerous growth.
And researchers hope present medications could also help fast-track the global effort to defend the p53 protein, now recognised as the “most important tumour suppressor”.
Prof Ygal Haupt, from Peter MacCallum’s tumour suppression laboratory, said damage to the p53 protein was a factor in “the great majority or almost all” cancers.
“So if we can protect it from destruction, that is sufficient to eliminate cancer cells, and this is now in clinical trials in various stages,” he said.
Prof Haupt and Prof Tony Burgess, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, are hosting the Weizmann Australia Making Connections Symposium at Melbourne Museum this week.
The conference brings together some of the world’s leading cancer researchers — with p53 a major topic of discussion.
Prof Haupt will present new research suggesting some drugs could protect the p53 gene from some of its natural “destructors”.
He and Prof Moshe Oren, of the Weizmann Institute, discovered how p53 was destroyed in the 1990s.
“Some of the targets we’ve identified already have drugs on the market,” he said.
“This means we could potentially repurpose a drug that wasn’t previously considered as a drug for targeting p53 ... that opens up a very important therapeutic window.”
Prof Haupt said it was too early to publicly announce which drugs could be effective, because the research was still in its early stages.
The p53 protein protects the human body by sensing damage to cells — and then either repairing or destroying them.
“But when p53 becomes mutated, two things happen,” Prof Haupt said. “One is the normal function is gone ... and two, the p53 mutant gains cancer-promoting functions.”