研究：真菌出人意料的用途——治疗癌症

路透华盛顿6月29日电(记者 健康与科学类编辑Maggie Fox)---美国研究人员周日公布，采用纳米技术、以及曾污染实验室试验的一种真菌研制的新型药物可能对一些列癌症有广泛疗效。

这种被称为lodamin的药物在癌症专家福克曼(Judah Folkman)生前最後一次实验中得到改良。福克曼是第一个提出用血管新生疗法治疗癌症的人，血管新生疗法是指切断血液供应，使肿瘤细胞挨饿而停止生长。

lodamin就是福克曼和他的团队研究了20载的成果，他的同事在《自然生物工艺学》(Nature Biotechnology)中写道他们已经研究出了这种没有副作用的血管新生抑制药片。

用小白鼠测试後发现，lodamin对很多肿瘤均有疗效，包括乳腺癌、成神经细胞癌、子宫癌、前列腺癌、脑癌等。lodamin可帮助抑制初期肿瘤的形成，也可防止肿瘤细胞扩散。

“清晰可见的肝脏”

“当我观察测试组白鼠时，它们的肝脏几乎清晰可见，但你根本找不到对照组白鼠的肝脏——都长满了肿瘤”。

lodamin可直接进入肿瘤细胞，遏制黑素瘤和肺癌的发展，并且没有明显副作用。

研究人员称，没有被注射lodamin药物的白鼠一直靠流食为生，它们的肝脏因肿瘤生长而被胀大，而服用药物的白鼠肝脏、脾均正常。

实验进行20天后，7只未服用的药物的白鼠死亡，而所有测试组白鼠全部存活。

Accidental fungus leads to promising cancer drug

(Nanowerk News) A drug developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

The drug, called lodamin, was improved in one of the last experiments overseen by Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher who died in January. Folkman pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy -- starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies.

Lodamin is an angiogenesis inhibitor that Folkman's team has been working to perfect for 20 years. Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, his colleagues say they developed a formulation that works as a pill, without side-effects.

They have licensed it to SynDevRx, Inc, a privately held Cambridge, Massachusetts biotechnology company that has recruited several prominent cancer experts to its board.

Tests in mice showed it worked against a range of tumors, including breast cancer, neuroblastoma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors known as glioblastomas and uterine tumors.

It helped stop so-called primary tumors and also prevented their spread, Ofra Benny of Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School and colleagues reported.

"Using the oral route of administration, it first reaches the liver, making it especially efficient in preventing the development of liver metastasis in mice," they wrote in their report. "Liver metastasis is very common in many tumor types and is often associated with a poor prognosis and survival rate," they added.

'Almost clean' livers

"When I looked at the livers of the mice, the treated group was almost clean," Benny said in a statement. "In the control group you couldn't recognize the livers -- they were a mass of tumors."

The drug was known experimentally as TNP-470, and was originally isolated from a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus fresenius.

Harvards's Donald Ingber discovered the fungus by accident while trying to grow endothelial cells -- the cells that line blood vessels. The mold affected the cells in a way known to prevent the growth of tiny blood vessels known as capillaries.

Ingber and Folkman developed TNP-470 with the help of Takeda Chemical Industries in Japan in 1990.

But the drug affected the brain, causing depression, dizziness and other side-effects. It also did not stay in the body long and required constant infusions. The lab dropped it.

Efforts to improve it did not work well. Then Benny and colleagues tried nanotechnology, attaching two "pom-pom"-shaped polymers to TNP-470, protecting it from stomach acid.

In mice, the altered drug, now named lodamin, went straight to tumor cells and helped suppress melanoma and lung cancer, with no apparent side effects, Benny said.

All untreated mice had fluid in the abdominal cavity, and enlarged livers covered with tumors. Mice treated with lodamin had normal-looking livers and spleens, the researchers said.

Twenty days after being injected with cancer cells, four out of seven untreated mice had died, while all treated mice were still alive, Benny's team reported.

"I had never expected such a strong effect on these aggressive tumor models," she said. The researchers believe lodamin may also be useful in other diseases marked by abnormal blood vessel growth, such as age-related macular degeneration.