Cancer Research // Current

Cancer-fighting Beer?!

Have you ever picked up a cold, frosty beer on a hot summer's day and thought that it simply couldn't get any better?

Well, you may have to think again.

A team of researchers at Rice University in Houston is working to create a beer that could fight cancer and heart disease. Taylor Stevenson, a member of the six-student research team and a junior at Rice, said the team is using genetic engineering to create a beer that includes resveratrol, the disease-fighting chemical that's been found in red wine.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin in June had called resveratrol, which is a natural component of grapes, pomegranates and red wine, a key reason for the so-called French Paradox -- the observation that French people have lower rates of heart disease despite a cuisine known for its cream sauces and decadent cheeses, all loaded with heart-clogging saturated fats.

The Wisconsin researchers had noted that adding small doses of resveratrol to the diet of middle-aged mice significantly slows their aging and keeps their hearts healthy. And they added that giving high doses to invertebrates extends their life spans, and high doses also stave off premature death in mice fed a high-fat diet.

Stevenson said that the Rice research group, most of the members of which aren't old enough to legally drink alcoholic beverages, came up with the idea of adding resveratrol to beer during a casual conversation about potential projects to undertake. "The idea is that it may have greater effects [in beer than in wine]," he added. "The amount of red wine you'd need to drink to get the same results they get with rats in labs is about half a bottle a day."

He explained that the amount of resveratrol in wine varies from bottle to bottle, since it depends on growing conditions for the grapes and other variables. The researchers felt they could design a beer with higher and more consistent concentrations of the cancer-fighting chemical.

The students, using their own Dell, Lenovo ThinkPad and Gateway laptops, are now in the process of developing a genetically modified strain of yeast that will ferment beer and produce resveratrol at the same time. Stevenson said that as the research advances, the team will need to use one of Rice University's computer grids to run compute-heavy genetic models.

The Rice effort is the latest in a series of projects that use technology to find cures to major health concerns like cancer and heart disease.

In August, scientists at Stanford University announced that they have found a way to use nanotechnology to have chemotherapy drugs target only cancer cells, keeping healthy tissue safe from the treatment's toxic effects.

CONT'D::Have you ever picked up a cold, frosty beer on a hot summer's day and thought that it simply couldn't get any better? ... more

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Putting Drug Development in Patients' Hands

"An entrepreneur stricken with cancer sets up firm to develop 'virtual' biotechs:

Jay M. Tenenbaum became a multimillionaire in the Internet boom of the late 1990s. But it wasn't until he was diagnosed with a lethal cancer that he found his calling as an Internet entrepreneur.

Dr. Tenenbaum learned in 1998 that he had melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer. He underwent surgery and took an experimental vaccine for a year. Then, nearly five years ago, the cancer returned, having spread to his liver. "That's when I started looking at my mortality seriously," says the 65-year-old from Portola Valley, Calif.

Frustrated with his treatment options, Dr. Tenenbaum began investigating other potential therapies. He found dozens of patient-advocacy organizations dedicated to melanoma that raised money and supported scientific research. They "all had good ideas," he says, "but no one had put the different pieces together in the right way that would let them make progress in finding a drug in the lifetime of a patient."

So he tapped his own Internet savvy -- and his connections -- to create a company aimed at helping patients develop new therapies faster and cheaper for less common diseases, like melanoma, that often don't attract major pharmaceutical company research funding. He set up his new company, called CollabRx, with $2 million he had available and is trying to raise $3 million more from family, friends and private investors.

Dr. Tenenbaum's idea taps into the recent phenomenon of patient-supported research -- a trend largely driven by people wealthy enough to help fund drug-discovery projects and who are affected by rare or overlooked diseases...."

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Quite an interesting man. Usually I rail on people of wealth but it's not often we get to see a man so in touch with the fragility of life that he moves to improve conditions, not only for himself, but for others also. I'm sure we could all learn a lot from him, knowing that collectively, together, we have the best chances to make sincerely meaningful differences and change in this life, here and now. I pray that the resolve of active compassion from many many many people rich and poor meet this man's venerable efforts to meaningful success--even if it isn't (may God forbid) evident by present or immediate accounts.

Much hope and grateful thanks to and for Dr. Tenebaum for taking the power back for the people who need it most... "An entrepreneur stricken with cancer sets up firm to develop 'virtual' biotechs: Jay M. Tenenbaum became a... more

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Cannabis: Cancer Research’s Most Surprising Story

Once again the cancer diagnosis of a well-known national figure -- in this case Sen. Ted Kennedy -- has sparked a flurry of interest in efforts to treat and cure this frustrating, complex and deadly illness. One of the most promising areas of research involves a group of chemicals whose origins may seem shocking.
The chemicals, called cannabinoids, are the active components in marijuana.
Yes, marijuana, the very same drug that seems to generate endless controversy here and abroad, and that our government still claims causes cancer -- a claim that appears to stand reality on its head.
The first solid data showing the anticancer effects of cannabinoids was developed by U.S. government researchers and published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute back in 1975. The scientists found that THC, the component that produces marijuana's "high," inhibits the growth of lung cancer cells in the test tube and in mice.
In a world that made sense, this discovery would have set off a frenzy of new research. After all, President Richard Nixon had declared "war on cancer" just a few years before, and vast sums of money were being spent investigating new approaches. But Nixon had also declared "war on drugs," with marijuana at the top of the demon-drugs list, so our government -- by far the world's largest source of medical research funding -- never pursued these remarkable findings. Research ground to a near-complete halt until the late 1990s.
Since then, THC and other marijuana components have been shown to block growth not only of lung tumors but a variety of other cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma and cancers of the breast and skin. These effects seem to occur through a variety of different cellular mechanisms.
As Spanish researcher Dr. Manuel Guzman, one of the world's leading experts in the field, wrote in a 2003 review in the journal Nature Reviews: Cancer, "Cannabinoids are selective antitumor compounds, as they can kill tumor cells without affecting their non-transformed counterparts. It is probable that cannabinoid receptors regulate cell-survival and cell-death pathways differently in tumor and nontumor cells."
That is exactly what you want in a cancer drug: Something that kills the malignant cells without harming healthy cells. It's because most chemotherapy drugs aren't selective enough that they cause such terrible nausea, vomiting, hair loss and other side effects.
One of the most fruitful areas of research has involved gliomas, the same type of brain tumor that Sen. Kennedy is battling. A search of PubMed, the U.S. government's medical database, using the search terms "cannabis" (the scientific name for marijuana), "cannabinoid," and "glioma" turned up 94 scientific journal articles, most of them published since 2000.
Most are lab or animal studies, demonstrating various mechanisms by which these marijuana chemicals kill glioma cells or stop glioma tumor growth. Amazingly, despite all this evidence, there has been only one, tiny, human study thus far, conducted by Dr. Guzman.
Guzman and colleagues injected THC directly into brain tumors in a handful of patients with recurring, inoperable gliomas -- patients considered terminal. It was primarily a safety study, and the THC injections proved completely safe.
Although the researchers concluded that the injection method they used may not have adequately distributed the medicine to all parts of these large tumors, two patients seemed to show definite (albeit temporary) improvement due to the treatment. The researchers urge that additional trials testing THC and other cannabinoids in this and other types of tumors be undertaken.
This is an exciting area of research, but one that has been needlessly -- and perhaps lethally -- slowed down by the U.S. government's slavish devotion to anti-marijuana dogma. That most of the work testing these marijuana derivatives as anticancer drugs is occurring outside the United States is a sad commentary indeed.
By Bruce Mirken Once again the cancer diagnosis of a well-known national figure -- in this case Sen. Ted Kennedy -- has sparked a flurry of... more