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Strategies & Market Trends : The 56 Point TA; Charts With an Attitude -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alski who wrote (20869)	8/27/1998 9:15:00 PM
From: Magnatizer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 79227

Alski not sure about USFC but I am pretty sure I know why CORR had the day it had. This one could be real nice when the market decides to rally again. Landmark Acute CoronarySyndrome Trial Shows Integrilin - Eptifibatide 08/26 18:42 Snake venom could fight breast tumors - researcher BOSTON, Aug 26 (Reuters) - A protein found in snake venom might work to fight breast cancer and perhaps other kinds of tumors, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. They said the protein halted tumor growth on two fronts -- preventing tumor cells from spreading throughout the body and stopping them from growing tiny blood vessels to nourish themselves. "It has sort of a dual simultaneous action," Francis Markland, a biochemistry professor at the University of Southern California, said in a telephone interview. "It doesn't hurt the cells but suspends aspects of physiology." Markland's team worked with copperhead venom and with specially-bred mice that had been injected with cells from human breast cancer tumors. Speaking to a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, Markland said the protein, which he calls contortrostatin after the Latin name of the species of southern copperhead he worked with, caused a 60 percent to 70 percent reduction in the growth rate of breast tumors. It stopped the spread of those tumor cells to the lungs of the mice by 90 percent. Several drug companies are working with snake venom to make a variety of clotbusting heart drugs. Integrilin, marketed by COR Therapeutics <CORR.O> and Schering-Plough Corp <SGP.N> and known generically as eptifibatide, is based on a protein called disintegrin taken from the pygmy rattlesnake. Merck <MRK.N> also makes a heart drug called Aggrastat, which is also based on disintegrin -- this one taken from the African saw-scaled viper snake. Scientists first homed in on the proteins after noting that the victims of some snake bites bleed to death. They disrupt the action of another protein -- integrin -- on the surface of cells that helps them stick together. This makes them perfect as heart drugs, as they stop blood from clotting. But Markland thought this action might stop tumors from growing and spreading, too, as the integrins on tumor cells are similar to the ones on platelets. "Our hypothesis was that since they interacted with proteins on the surface of platelets, we reasoned that they would therefore interact with proteins on the surface of breast cancer cells," Markland said. They did. Markland thinks the disintegrin found in the southern copperhead might be different from that found in other species of snakes. "This type of protein is present in other species of snakes but in the southern copperhead seems to be unique. That may imbue it with some super-reactivity." He said it is more complex than the disintegrin found in other snakes. Now Markland wants to find a way to get large amounts of the protein to test, as milking the snakes for their venom is not very productive. "For the clinical trials we would need to get every snake in the world," he said. "We need to get a large-scale expression system. We are trying to coax bacteria (to make it)," he added. Markland said he also hoped to work with a drug company to conduct clinical, or human, trials. ht david