medicine

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Conspiracy to Find a Cure

A trio of oral medicines from Abbott Laboratories Inc to treat hepatitis C produced unprecedented cure rates in patients who had failed to benefit from standard treatment, as well as very high cure rates for newly treated patients

Some 93 percent of patients who failed prior therapy had a sustained virologic response (SVR), meaning they were considered cured, after 12 weeks of taking the trio of new drugs, plus ribavirin.

“Nobody anywhere has broken the 50 percent mark in (cure rates) for this population,” Scott Brun, a senior Abbott research executive said in an interview. “These are robust results.”

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Healers Conspiring to Find New Healing Agents

New antibiotic cures disease by disarming pathogens, not killing them

A new type of antibiotic can effectively treat an antibiotic-resistant infection by disarming instead of killing the bacteria that cause it. Researchers report their findings in the October 2 issue of mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

“Traditionally, people have tried to find antibiotics that rapidly kill bacteria. But we found a new class of antibiotics which has no ability to kill Acinetobacter that can still protect, not by killing the bug, but by completely preventing it from turning on host inflammation,” says Brad Spellberg of the UCLA Medical Center and David Geffen School of Medicine, a researcher on the study.

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People You Don’t Know Are Working Hard to Do Good

Scientists discover benevolent virus that kills all grades of breast cancer within seven days

The virus, known as adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2), is naturally occurring and carried by up to 80 percent of humans, but it does not cause any disease.

Researchers learned of its cancer-killing properties in 2005, after Penn State scientists observed it killing cervical cancer cells. They also found that women who carried the AAV2 virus and human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer, had a lower propensity to develop cervical cancer.

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People You Don’t Know Are Working Behind the Scenes for the Good of Us All

A vaccine that can train cancer patients’ own bodies to seek out and destroy tumor cells has been developed by scientists.

The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of all cancers, could provide a universal injection that allows patients’ immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer.

Preliminary results from early clinical trials have shown the vaccine can trigger an immune response in patients and reduce levels of disease

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Smart People Are Working Behind the Scenes to Help Us All

High School Student Devises Possible Cure for Cancer

Born to Chinese immigrants, 17-year-old Angela Zhang of Cupertino, California is a typical American teenager. She’s really into shoes and is just learning how to drive.

But there is one thing that separates her from every other student at Monta Vista High School, something she first shared with her chemistry teacher, Kavita Gupta.

It’s a research paper Angela wrote in her spare time — and it is advanced, to say the least. Gupta says all she knows is its recipe — for curing cancer.