Blue Light Special: Killing Cancer With “Light Activation”

A new platinum-based compound that is activated by blue light offers a cancer-killing potency that is up to 80 times higher than that of current platinum-based anti-cancer drugs, according to research led by the University of Warwick.

Working in conjunction with researchers at Ninewells Hospital Dundee and the University of Edinburgh, the Warwick team hopes the new compound will improve cancer treatment effectiveness for a wide variety of cancers. According to Professor Peter Sadler, University of Warwick Department of Chemistry:

“This compound could have a significant impact on the effectiveness of future cancer treatments. Light activation provides this compound’s massive toxic power and also allows treatment to be targeted much more accurately against cancer cells.”

This assertion is backed up by initial tests performed at Ninewells Hospital Dundee. Here, a team tested the effectiveness of the new compound on killing cultivated esophageal cancer cells. The results of these studies were encouraging, with 50 percent of all cancer cells killed by a small concentration of 8.4 micro moles per liter of the compound.

Additional research for the compound is set to begin on ovarian and liver cancer cells.

Previous platinum-based compounds have been engineered to react to ultraviolet light. However, the narrow wavelength of ultraviolet rays has limited its real-world potential. Since the new compound reacts directly with visible blue light (as well as green light), it is expected to deliver a broader range of applications.

Researchers also report that the new compound is stable and easily administered. Additionally, it is water soluble, meaning that it simply dissolves and flushes from the body following treatment.

Peter Sadler explains that “light activation generates a powerful cytotoxic compound that has proven to be significantly more effective than treatments such as cisplatin.” As a result, the team has hopes that the new compound will offer effective treatment options for cancer types that do not traditionally respond well to platinum-based chemotherapy.

Source:

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20101210/Researchers-find-new-light-activated-platinum-based-compound-to-kill-cancer-cells.aspx

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The So-Called Job Killing Health Reform Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the “Repealing the Job Killing Health Care Law Act”, which is the name House Republicans gave their bill repealing the health reform act that became law last spring. But is the name of the new House bill honest? Is the new health care reform law really “job killing”?

Andrew Leonard explains how Republicans figured the health reform law they call “Obamacare” would kill jobs:

“The primary evidence for their assertion is based on a line in the CBO analysis of the bill that estimates that the labor supply might drop by one-half of 1 percent as a result of the passage of the ACA. The Republicans multiplied the total number of jobs in the country by half a percent and came up with a total of 650,000 jobs lost”

But the “labor supply” isn’t jobs. The labor supply is the number of employees and people looking for jobs.

According to the CBO, healthcare reform could result in a lower labor supply because workers may voluntarily leave their jobs, secure in the knowledge that they would still have access to healthcare.

In most of the United States, insurance companies can refuse to issue policies to people with pre-existing conditions. Earlier this week, the Secretary of Health and Human Services released a study that said as many as 129 million Americans under the age of 65 have medical conditions that an insurance company could “red flag” as a reason to deny insurance.

Access to health care is a huge worry to Americans, including Americans with the deadly lung cancer mesothelioma. The cost of mesothelioma treatment could be ruinous to the uninsured.

Many of these 129 million people do have insurance today, because they obtained insurance policies while they were healthy. But if they lost their insurance because of, say, a job loss, they may have to wait until 2014 until they can be insured again. Beginning in 2014, a provision in the health care reform law goes into effect that requires insurance companies to insure people with “pre-existing conditions.” But the Republican bill repeals that.

I’ve written previously why I don’t think health care reform will be repealed.  Beside the fact that the insurance industry does not want the act entirely repealed, to become law the Republican bill still has to be passed in the Senate — doubtful — and not vetoed by President Obama — when hell freezes over.

Assuming the law is not repealed and all of its provisions go into effect, most economists say it’s impossible to predict with certainty if the law will have any effect on employment, one way or another. However, economist Steven Pearlstein wrote of health care reform, “Since the immediate impact of the measure will be to allow 30 million more Americans the chance to buy drugs and medical services from doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, it’s hard to imagine a more effective way to reduce employment in the one sector that is actually adding jobs.”

That’s right; even several months after the passage of the dreaded “Obamacare,” the health care industry is growing far more robustly than the rest of our economy. Go figure.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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