(Press-News.org) Arlington, Va. — A novel drug that mimics a naturally occurring molecule found in coffee and blueberries has been developed to treat radiation exposure. Charles R. Yates, Pharm.D., Ph.D., and colleagues Duane Miller, Ph.D., and Waleed Gaber, Ph.D., from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and Baylor College of Medicine, show that application of this drug, starting 24 hours after radiation exposure, increases survival in animal models by three-fold compared to placebo.
Their work, which is funded through an NIH grant from the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is being presented at the 2012 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the world's largest pharmaceutical sciences meeting, in Chicago, Ill., Oct. 14 – 18.
"Development of drugs for individuals who are exposed to high-dose radiation in a public health emergency has been a priority since the 9/11 terrorist attacks," said Yates. "The ultimate goal is wide dissemination of non-invasive treatments after 24 hours of a mass casualty."
The high risk of vomiting after radiation exposure proves problematic for oral treatments, the most common non-invasive delivery method. Injectable medication is often proposed as the next line of defense, which comes with its own challenges. For example, training is often required for injections. To combat this problem, Yates and his team designed a new delivery system that can be applied directly to the skin, similar to an adhesive bandage.
"We are extremely proud to have exclusive rights to this exciting technology," said W. Shannon McCool, D.Ph., president & CEO of RxBio, the entity that has licensed the technology from the University of Tennessee Research Foundation.
This drug is also highly effective in models where radiation exposure is combined with skin wounds – a likely scenario in which people are exposed to shrapnel from dirty bombs or associated burn wounds.
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The 2012 AAPS Annual Meeting and Exposition improves global health through advances in pharmaceutical sciences. The meeting features more than 90 programming sessions, including more than 50 symposia and roundtables.
AAPS is pleased to announce that our smartphone application is available at the 2012 AAPS Annual Meeting and Exposition. This application can assist meeting attendees with anything and everything they need to navigate the conference at their fingertips.
Editor's Note: All press must provide press credentials to attend this meeting. The deadline for online media registration is Oct. 5. After that date, media must register on-site. For media registration, please contact Kimberly Brown at BrownK@aaps.org or (703) 248-4772. To schedule an interview with Charles Yates or for any other press inquiry, please contact Hillarie Turner or Dana Korsen at aaps@ecius.net or 202-296-2002.
About AAPS:
The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists is a professional, scientific society of approximately 11,000 members employed in academia, industry, government and other research institutes worldwide. Founded in 1986, AAPS provides a dynamic international forum for the exchange of knowledge among scientists to serve the public and enhance their contributions to health. AAPS offers timely scientific programs, on-going education, information resources, opportunities for networking, and professional development. For more information, please visit www.aaps.org. Follow us on Twitter @AAPSComms; official Twitter hashtag for the meeting is: #AAPS2012.
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Arlington, Va. — A dissolvable oral strip has been developed to immediately relieve pain from burns caused by ingestion of hot foods and liquids, such as coffee, pizza, and soup. This research is being presented at the 2012 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the world's largest pharmaceutical sciences meeting, in Chicago, Ill., on Oct. 14 – 18.
Lead researcher Jason McConville, Ph.D., and colleagues from University of Texas at Austin, designed the strip for controlled delivery of a local anesthetic, benzocaine, and ...
Sumatran orangutans have undergone a substantial recent population decline, according to a new genetic study, but the same research revealed the existence of critical corridors for dispersal migrations that, if protected, can help maintain genetic diversity and aid in the species' conservation.
One of two species of orangutans, the Sumatran orangutan is classified as "critically endangered" by the IUCN Red List. Once widespread on the island of Sumatra, only an estimated 6,600 individuals remain, restricted to small forest patches on the northern tip of the island. Recent ...
Sickle cell disease—the most common inherited blood disorder in the United States—causes red blood cells to distort into a crescent shape and block small blood vessels. New insights into how these abnormal cells disrupt circulation could lead to more effective treatment strategies, as revealed by a study published by Cell Press in the October 17th issue of Biophysical Journal.
"Sickle cell disease entails a central mechanical component, since the circulation gets blocked," explains senior study author Frank Ferrone of Drexel University. "We now finally understand how ...
Scientists from the University of Leeds have found that the protein called prion helps our brains to absorb zinc, which is believed to be crucial to our ability to learn and the wellbeing of our memory.
The findings published today (Tuesday 16 October) in Nature Communications show that prion protein regulates the amount of zinc in the brain by helping cells absorb it through channels in the cell surface. It is already known that high levels of zinc between brain cells are linked with diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Professor Nigel Hooper from the University's ...
(Edmonton) Northern Alberta's boreal forest shows a surprising resiliency to human intrusion, but University of Alberta researchers warn the landscape has a definite breaking point.
The U of A research team led by graduate student Stephen Mayor found that up to a certain point plant life in the boreal forest responded to intrusions such as roadways and farm fields by actually increasing its biodiversity.
The researchers, counted plant species in sites across the whole of northern Alberta, an area larger than Germany. Then satellite and aerial photos were used to ...
Volcanic eruptions vary from common, small eruptions that have little impact on humans and the environment to rare, large-to-gigantic eruptions so massive they can threaten civilizations.
While scientists don't yet fully understand the mechanisms that control whether an eruption is large or small, they do know that eruptions are driven by the rapid expansion of bubbles formed from water and other volatile substances trapped in molten rock as it rises beneath a volcano. The mechanism is much the same as that involved in shaking a bottle of a carbonated drink and then ...
Tampa, FL (Oct. 16, 2012) -- A landmark paper identifying genetic signatures that predict which patients will respond to a life-saving drug for treating congestive heart failure has been published by a research team co-led by Stephen B. Liggett, MD, of the University of South Florida.
The study, drawing upon a randomized placebo-controlled trial for the beta blocker bucindolol, apprears this month in the online international journal PLoS ONE. In addition to Dr. Liggett, whose laboratory discovered and characterized the two genetic variations, Christopher O'Connor, ...
This press release is available in German.
To solve the acute, global problem of securing food resources for a continuously growing population, we must work constantly to increase the sustainability and effectiveness of modern agricultural techniques. These efforts depend on new insights from plant ecology, particularly from work on native plants that grow in the primordial agricultural niche. Based on field studies on wild tobacco plants in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, USA, researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, demonstrated that ...
An extremely brief reversal of the geomagnetic field, climate variability and a super volcano
41,000 years ago, a complete and rapid reversal of the geomagnetic field occured. Magnetic studies of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences on sediment cores from the Black Sea show that during this period, during the last ice age, a compass at the Black Sea would have pointed to the south instead of north. Moreover, data obtained by the research team formed around GFZ researchers Dr. Norbert Nowaczyk and Prof. Helge Arz, together with additional data from other studies ...
People in creative professions are treated more often for mental illness than the general population, there being a particularly salient connection between writing and schizophrenia. This according to researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, whose large-scale registry study is the most comprehensive ever in its field.
Last year, the team showed that artists and scientists were more common amongst families where bipolar disorder and schizophrenia is present, compared to the population at large. They subsequently expanded their study to many more psychiatric diagnoses ...
