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Repurposing and Household Items

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:48:00 -0600

Hook a rubber band through your pants button hole and secure the other side to the button for an extra half-inch of breathing room.

Use dryer sheets as shoe deodorizers.

Fabric netting, which can be easily torn for size, makes a great dish scrubber.

A medium-sized paperclip can be a key chain, a zipper tab or the weighted nose on a paper airplane.

An empty tissue box makes a clever receptacle for plastic bags.

We are all familiar with items that have been invented and patented for one purpose only to be discovered that they are useful for many more.

These repurposed ideas, born out of simple necessity, are similar to the mindful path Partnership for Cures and our funding partners take: encouraging scientists and clinicians to find alternative treatment options for catastrophic diseases by repurposing already FDA approved drugs and devices.

Repurposing drugs and devices may not be as simple as untwisting a coat hanger and using it to resolve an itch that can’t be reached any other way but it is a predictable and inexpensive way to solve the desperate need for treatments for patients who have no other hope for a cure.

Brain Injury Victims Benefit From Drug Repurposing

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:31:00 -0600

As 2011 was winding down, the story of Australian stoke victim, Sam Goddard was still making the rounds on American television and in social media. His fiancée, Sally Nielsen, discovered information on the internet about the use of Stilnox/Ambien, a prescription medication used for the short-term treatment of insomnia, as a way to help brain injury victims move out of their vegetative states. The active ingredient in Stilnox is called Zolpidem - it is a sedative which acts as a central nervous system depressant that slows down the activities of the brain to be able to induce sleep.

Sally facilitated getting Sam the prescription for Stilnox, and adjusted the dosages which then allowed him to begin to communicate with the outside world.

There are many more details about Sam Goddard, his family, and Dr. Wally Nel and Dr. Ralph Claus, who are doing studies on Stilnox and its effects on the brain. While researchers work to catch up with what this all means and begin filtering it through the prism of evidence-based medicine, brain injury victims and their families are hopeful.

Stilnox may or may not be a total rescue for brain injury victims. However, its undeniable results in this one case bear out the importance of the continuous exploration of drug rediscovery as a way to improve patients’ lives quickly and safely by repurposing existing drugs and treatments.

For more on this topic please click the links below:

http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/28/9769951-stroke-victim-recovering-with-fiances-love-and-unconventional-ambien-treatment

http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/blog.aspx?blogentryid=928199&showcomments=true

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/sep/12/health.healthandwellbeing

New Hopes with Old Drugs-Breast Cancer

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:07:00 -0600

New Hopes with Old Drugs-Breast Cancer

Repurposing known drugs to find new possibilities for health in chronic illnesses continues to bring hope to patients and doctors alike. An anti-malaria drug is now being studied for use in breast cancer patients whose disease has stubbornly failed to respond to traditional chemotherapy treatment.

Director of the Methodist Cancer Center in Houston, Dr. Jenny Chang, is leading a study looking at the safety of a drug used for malaria called, chloroquine, which is being used in combination with chemotherapy as a possible option for women with advanced metastatic breast cancer.

With limited funds flowing into new drug development, Chang said it is important to look at existing and more affordable drugs to treat a variety of diseases. “We’re very hopeful that this is a new paradigm that we can apply, repurposing old drugs for 5 cents a day that may make an impact in reversing treatment-resistance in women with breast cancer”, said Chang, a breast medical oncologist.

Last paragraph excerpted from the article on fiercebiotech.com.

Chloroquine is a drug Partnership for Cures is familiar with. It is being used in a clinical trial for lung cancer to reduce the cancer’s ability to become resistant to chemotherapy. Partnership for Cures funders and researchers discovered the potential of this drug in lung cancer. Repurposed chloroquine is also being tested in a number of other diseases. Stay tuned!

Surprising New Uses for Older Drugs; HIV Vaccine?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:33:00 -0500

Partnerships for Cures is a nonprofit organization that supports Rediscovery Research™. Many people are not aware of the positive impact on the lives of people with diseases that come as a result of Rediscovery Research. A recent article posted in the Wall Street Journal by Amy Dockser Marcus speaks to the importance of Rediscovery Research, as well as the purpose of Partnerships for Cures. The article entitled, “Surprising New Uses for Older Drugs; HIV Vaccine?” discusses several findings as a result of rediscovery research, with the focus being on the a recent discovery, repurposing the compound cyclodextrin. Researchers were trying to develop a vaccine with cyclodextrin that will help HIV patients fight off HIV infection. Other scientists are also testing the drug to see if it can help develop treatments for people with Alzheimer’s & Ebola virus. What spurred this testing? An email from the mother of twin daughters that have Niemann-Pick Type C disease, for which cyclodextrin had been prescribed.

Partnerships for Cures mission is to “rediscover” new uses for approved drug and devices. We find clinicians, scientists, and even parents and patients who have some idea for a new use for a current drug based on their own experience. We connect them with clinical researchers and find funders to support the research, to try to prove whether this Rediscovery Research will work for patients.

Many people don’t know how often the serendipity of Rediscovery Research happens. Partnerships for Cures has had a role in the repurposing of a number of drugs, including the drug Thalidomide, mentioned in Ms. Marcus’ article. For example, Rogaine was initially used to lower blood pressure. The more popular use for Rogaine today is to stimulate hair growth. Another popular case is Viagra. Initially Viagra was tested to treat angina (a chest pain that is the result of your heart muscle not getting enough blood), now it is used for erectile dysfunction. Although there are many discoveries in the world to be made, the power of Rediscovery Research should not be overlooked.

Dog Nose Best

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 05:37:00 -0500

Listen to this Interview of Dr. Bruce Bloom and Lisa Kelley as they discuss the benefits and added quality of life that dogs can bring to diabetics of all ages.

/media/AA/AB/4cures/downloads/149483/Disney_interview_Dogs_for_cures_edited.wav

Harvard's Dr. Denise Faustman Honored at “Laughter Is the Best Medicine Event"

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:26:00 -0500

Dr. Denise Faustman was honored by Partnership for Cures with the 2011 George and Judith Goldman Angel Award for her research to find an effective treatment for type 1 diabetes using the generic drug, BCG. The award was presented at the Partnership for Cures “Laughter Is the Best Medicine Event.” Partnership for Cures and its funding partners are longtime supporters of the Faustman Lab’s research.

Hundreds of donors who attended this wonderful event were kept entertained by the talented Chicago Bar Association Traveling Comedy Troupe. In addition to celebrating Dr. Faustman’s type 1 diabetes efforts, the event was also a fundraiser for the Phase II BCG Human Clinical Trial and for the organization Dogs for Cures, which trains medical alert service dogs for people with type 1 diabetes.

Laughter is the BEST Medicine

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:41:00 -0500

Join us May 11, 2011 in Chicago at the Standard Club, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM

to support the 2nd Partnership for Cures Fundraiser for Diabetes Research

The recipients of the fundraiser will be:

to support the training and research of diabetes alert dogs

and

Harvard Medical School Type 1 Diabetes Rediscovery Research Clinical Trial

Harvard's Dr. Denise Faustman will be honored for contributions to the search for a diabetes cure

Come laugh with us while the Chicago Bar Association traveling troupe entertains us with skits and songs about Chicago and Illinois politics! Then join us for a delicious dessert buffet served by the staff at the Standard Club!!

Buy your tickets on Google Checkout

Research Projects and Laughter ...?

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:19:00 -0600

We sent out our first Request for Applications on February 1, 2011 for projects that relate to Rediscovery Research. Projects of all shapes and forms have been submitted. We are quite pleased with the result.

The Letters of Intent were due February 15. We received 126 LOIs! The more complete proposals are due March 4, 2011, after which we will begin fundraising.

Patient Impact Initiative - March 5,2011: We have signed MOUs or handshake agreements from over a dozen research institutions, including Cleveland Clinic, University of Chicago, Rush University Medical Center, UMass Medical Center, University of Southern CA, University of Texas, the Menninger Clinic, Saint Louis University, Sanford Burnham Institute, Ohio State University, and Dalhousie University and are completing agreements with Mayo Clinic, University of Wisconsin, Case Western Reserve and the University of South Carolina.

Fundraising will be kicked off with a special event to raise funds for Diabetic Research.

This is scheduled for the evening of May 11, 2011, at The Standard Club of Chicago.

The event is being planned and will be officially announced on March 11, 2011 via the website, our blog, Facebook and LinkedIn. Please comment and friend us on all of the accounts and help to spread the word.

Harder than ever to get new drugs approved

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 12:33:00 -0600

As reported in the online version of The Scientist on February 21, 2011, it is getting harder for Pharma to get new drugs approved: "Bad news for new drugs Everyone knows that developing novel drugs is tough. But a new study from the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) found that in the last 6 years, it’s gotten harder than ever to get new pharmaceutical products on the market. BIO’s study tracked drug development from 2004 through 2010 and found that the success rate for drugs moving from Phase I clinical trials to FDA approval is approximately one in 10. This is down from a success rate of about one in five or six in previous years. “It ain’t getting any easier to develop new therapies,” Alan Eisenberg, BIO’s head of emerging companies and business development, told Reuters. Biologics fared better, with a success rate of about 15 percent." Why are we so excited about Rediscovery Research? Because there is a much better chance of Rediscovery Research treatments getting to patients than New Discovery Research treatments, and according to The Scientist report, New Drug Discovery Research has gotten twice as hard over the last 6 years!

Chicago perfect home for Cures center

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:50:00 -0600

Dr. Bruce Bloom, CEO and Chief Science Officer of Partnership for Cures (4cures.org) has been supportive of the American Center for Cures (ACC) for the last 7 years. Dr. Bloom is pictured here with both Chicago mayoral candidate Gery Chico and ACC founder Lou Weisbach.

"Mayoral challenger Gery Chico vowed Tuesday to find a home in Chicago for a $3 billion complex devoted to curing deadly diseases. You do whatever it takes to make something like this happen. Talk about a game-changer. . . . This can define this city for the next hundred years if we get this right,” Chico said. “Imagine if we start to cure diseases and all those trillions [spent] to deal with the symptoms to those diseases and providing treatment to those diseases is taken away.”

The American Center for Cures is a dream of Lou Weisbach, the Democratic fund-raiser and former founder and chairman of Ha-Lo Industries, who also happens to be one of Chico’s biggest supporters."

read more.... and the interesting and supportive comments:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/3262236-505/chico-center-diseases-cures-weisbach.html

Why can't we all work together?

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:20:00 -0500

Partnership for Cures and our funder the LUNGevity Foundation support a very smart clinician researcher at a very prestigious institution who is undertaking some pioneering work in breath detection of lung cancer.

We funded this promising research even though we know that there is similar research going on all over the world, and that some of this research might be far ahead of our researcher, or might have already discovered data that prove our researcher's hypothesis false.

If you search on Pub-Med for the terms "cancer AND exhaled breath" you will find articles published by research teams in Germany, Israel, Australia, Taiwan, China, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and America, just on the first page of 20 results! Does our researcher have all the pertinent information from all of these research teams, and is he sharing with them? Is his work as informed as it could be? Are we, before we select him? Probably not.

That might make our choice of research funding seem foolish. In a perfect world all the researchers working in a particular area would benefit from open collaboration. They would share best practices, insights, data, technology, samples-anything that would move discoveries to patients more quickly and less expensively.

The research world we have is far from this kind of perfection. Except in extraordinary circumstances created by government or other funders, researchers work in isolation, only learning what others are doing IF and when the results are published, often long after the relevant information could impact ongoing research, saving valuable time and funds.

That's because the current system of research incentives and IP protections don't allow the transparency and collaboration that would place the interest of patients first. We are all for capitalist incentives as a way to create innovation and future funding for research, and we have to figure out how to make this capitalism work for patients..

There are ways to create transparency and collaboration within a capitalistic framework. It takes a lot of hard work, shedding of egos, and openness to new ideas. Organizations like the Myelin Repair Foundation and the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium have created such collaborations. The LUNGevity Foundation just merged with Protect Your Lungs to combine the strengths of both organizations and create a new research agenda, one hopefully designed to work within the framework of capitalism to impact patients quickly.

Safe, Quick, Afforable New Treatments Thru Repurposing Drugs

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 10:38:00 -0500

The Issue: The treatment options for patients with most catastrophic diseases have not significantly improved in the last decades even though the US government and industry have invested over $500B dollars in medical research. The incentives that support this "New Discovery Research" are generally profits, academic promotion, and intellectual property protection. Patient impact only occurs as a consequence of these business incentives, not as the primary focus. Most patients go without effective new treatments for decades, especially in rare "orphaned" diseases where profit potential is poor.

A Solution: Treatment opportunities are ALREADY AVAILABLE, by repurposing existing scientific knowledge, medical treatments and clinical practice observations that can quickly, safely and affordably impact patients. Researchers have ideas, yet how to they fund and test them? This "RE-Discovery Research" can impact patients quickly by leveraging what we already know about a disease and one or more already approved drugs. We just have to connect the dots.

Philanthropy can support Rediscovery Research because philanthropy focuses on positive patient impact ahead of profit, academic promotion or intellectual property protection. Rediscovery Research can quickly create repurposed treatments with significant near term healthcare improvement while the "New Discovery Research" system works on long term development of new treatments and cures.

Rediscovery Research creates results quickly, and has the added value of kick starting many longer term cure options based on repurposed treatments. Thalidomide was repurposed to treatment blood cancer and is still being used; Celgene designed Revlimid, based on Thalidomide, to create a more powerful treatment with fewer side effects.

What Rediscovery Research ideas do you have? Let us know!

Scientific American-Teaching Old Drugs New Tricks

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:46:00 -0500

March 15, 2007 -- You Can Teach Old Drugs New Tricks

Many drugs find a new life when doctors notice that a medication designed for one purpose seems to do something else unexpected. This week saw two studies in which an existing drug showed promise for a different disease. In a study published in the journal Cancer Research, a hormone important in the control of blood pressure was found to shrink lung cancer tumors in mice. Trials on people will begin soon. Researchers got the idea to test the drug against cancer when they saw that a population of blood pressure patients on so-called ACE inhibitors—which increase level of the hormone studied—had lower than expected rates of lung cancer. Meanwhile, a report in the journal Chest finds that a particular drug seems to improve a condition called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, marked by scarring in the lungs. A small study of patients on the drug found that they had a measurable increase in their lung function and could walk further. The drug in question is in fact the blood vessel dilator Viagra. Which sometimes makes walking more difficult.

Download the Podcast: http://podcast.sciam.com/daily/sa_d_podcast_070315.mp3

Pharma Repurposing Drugs for Patients

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:30:00 -0500

Can You Teach an Old Drug New Tricks?

Posted on 08:55PM (EDT) on 2007-07-01

There's a new trend in the pharmaceutical industry: repurposing old drugs for new indications and/or combining current drugs to create brand new effects. Recent studies suggest that two drugs (Lyrica and Neurontin) approved for the treatment of neuropathic (nerve) pain may also be helpful for improving sleep quality. And since disordered sleep is also at the root of conditions like fibromyalgia, there seems to be reason for enthusiasm. Another study suggests that Wellbutrin (an anti-depressant often used as a smoking cessation aid) could be useful for enhancing libido. Again, some cause for celebration - quit smoking AND improve your sex life with one pill? Not bad.

The New York Times describes the new trend in drug combination research - robots combine random drugs to see if together they have stronger effects on tissue cultures than they do alone. Sounds like low-brow trial and error, but companies such as CombinatoRx are betting that this approach will turn up potential therapeutic benefits at a faster rate (and at much lower costs) than the old-fashioned process of original drug research and development.

This should be handled with a healthy dose of skepticism - is combining nexium (a stomach acid reducer) and naproxen (pain medicine that can harm the stomach lining) anything more than a commercial gimmick? What about the chance finding that anticoagulants enhance the effects of inflammation-reducing steroids? Perhaps that is indeed relevant and helpful?

It's clear that testing drug combinations has the potential to create a financial windfall for pharmaceutical companies - so the FDA will need to make sure that these new combo drugs offer real benefits over taking them separately.

Still, if you asked me where I'd rather put my research dollars - testing unusual drug combinations in Petri dishes or analyzing whether or not water has memory (a foundational principle of homeopathy), I think you know where I'd place my bet.

Go ahead and shuffle and re-deal, Big Pharma. Maybe you and the FDA will uncover something useful after all? We'll be watching with interest and a critical eye.

How Funding Helps Researchers and Patients

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 06:56:00 -0500

Dear Funders of Partnership for Cures:

Thank you very much! I will always be indebted for the Culpeper award, which really let my scientific career flourish. The award also helped me gain the stature in ophthalmology as a clinician-scientist that has led to my new position at University of Washington, where I am leading an effort to establish a world-class eye institute in Seattle. We hope to do some truly great things to eradicate blinding disease in the world. So thank you!

Russell Van Gelder

russvg@u.washington.edu
Boyd C. Bucey Professor and Chair, Department of Ophthalmology

Our laboratory has two major interests. On a basic research level, we study non-visual photoreception -- how the eye can sense light without seeing. Non-visual pathways mediate the pupillary light response in mammals and birds, and mediate entrainment of circadian rhythms in animals as well. Our laboratory combines molecular genetics, physiology, molecular biology, and biochemistry to characterize these processes. We employ several model systems, including circadian rhythm entrainment and pupillary light responses of mice, the pupillary light response of the embryonic chicken iris, and cell culture based systems to study the function of non-visual photopigments including melanopsin and cryptochrome. We are also interested in conferring photosensitivity to non-photoreceptive cells in the retina as a means for restoring vision-like function to certain forms of blindness. On a translational research level, our laboratory is interested in pathogen detection and discovery in ocular inflammatory disease. We employ polymerase chain reaction-based detection, representational sequencing, and immuno-proteomic techniques to identify antigens and pathogens inducing inflammation in the eye.

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:15:00 -0500

Dear Friends,

If you are an American Express card holder we need your help.

Between now and Aug. 31, 2008 please do the two things below:

Please nominate our American Express Members Project "Teaching Old Drugs New Tricks" to reach the Top 25 projects . Click on this link to nominate : http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/0MDL5M
Please campaign for our project by promoting it on the Members Project Discussion Boards and by telling all of your friends and family about it using the helpful tools on http://www.membersproject.com

Last year, Members Project participants helped provide clean drinking water to children all across Africa. This year, "Teaching Old Drugs New Tricks" (our submission) could receive funding (grand prize $1.5M) . Most of us know someone stricken with a catastrophic disease. The $60B a year spent on new drug research rarely makes a difference for those who have disease right now-the cure is always 5-10 years away. We can "recycle " and repurpose existing FDA approved drugs and other therapies for use in a different disease and create a significant and immediate impact for patients. Harnessing the new power of old drugs is thinking FOR-PATIENT instead of FOR-PROFIT!