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Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John McCarthy who wrote (14746)	2/12/1998 1:41:00 AM
From: Andrew H	Respond to of 32384

Thanks, John. I don't know if there could be a connection, but maybe Henry could send an email to someone at the company and alert them to this possibility in case they haven't thought of it. >>Taxol May Fight Kidney Disease as Well as Cancer Taxol, approved by the FDA for treatment of ovarian and breast cancer, may also be an effective medication for treatment of polycystic kidney diseases, as was recently published by David D.L. Woo et al. [Nature 368: 750(1994)]. Polycystic kidney diseases are the most common hereditary diseases of the human kidney and account for 10% of all kidney transplant or dialysis patients. There is currently no treatment for the formation and enlargement of renal cysts. Woo et al. developed an in vitro model of spontaneous cyst formation and found that taxol inhibits the process. Mice with polycystic kidney disease normally die of uremia (toxic levels of was products in their bloodstream) by 4-5 weeks of age. Similar mice treated weekly with taxol are still alive after 200 days. This "suggests that taxol or its analogs may be useful in the treatment of human polycystic kidney diseases," the researcher said. Because taxol acts on microtubules (large cytoskeletal filaments), "our data implicate the microtubule network in the genesis of polycystic kidney disease cysts in both in vitro and in vivo."<<