Many volunteers world-wide commit themselves to raising funds for cancer research and cursosenlinea.igam.edu.mx blog article cancer charities. Many tens of thousands more work in the industry as carers, or researching, prescribing, identifying and manufacturing drugs. Huge companies spend fortunes on cancer research. After so long and a lot of billions spent what exactly has cancer research revealed?

There are already regular breakthroughs in our understanding of cancer, but little progress in its treatment. Modern research into cancer began within the 1940's and 50's when scientists isolated substances that killed cancer cells growing in a petri dish, or leukaemia cells in laboratory mice. Early successes in chemotherapy set the pace and received much media exposure, even though they only applied to 5% of cancer treatments at most.

Serving humanity by solving its major diseases has a celebrity status, there is a lot of kudos and an air of Hollywood involved with such things. Cancer research is high profile activity and every now and after that a scientific treatment solutions are discovered that gains wide recognition, such as the HPV-16 trial, but it only applies itself to dealing with a small percentage of cancers. Mass-media hype is included in the problem of how we see cancer. Early discoveries setup an expectation that there was a cure-all treatment, a 'magic bullet' that could make its discoverer famous by curing cancer throughout the world. The idea stems in part from aspirin, the original bullet that magically finds its way to the pain and diminishes it.

Within the 1950's and 60's huge and expensive research projects were set up to test every known substance to find out if it effected cancer cells. You could remember the discovery of the Madagascar Periwinkle (Catharansus Roseus), which revealed alkaloids (vinblastine and vincristine) which are still used in chemotherapy today. Taxol, a remedy for ovarian and breast cancer originally came from the Pacific Yew tree. A remedy for testicular cancer and small-cell lung cancer called 'Etoposide' was produced from the May apple. In 'Plants Used Against Cancer' by Jonathan Hartwell over 3,000 plants are identified from medical and folklore sources for the treatment of cancer, around half of that have been shown to have some effect upon cancer cells in a test tube.

When these plants are made into synthetic drugs, single chemicals are isolated and the rest of the plant may be thrown away. The medicinally active molecules are extracted from the plant and modified until they're chemically unique. Then the compound is patented, given a brand name and tested.

Within the first phase it's going to generally be tested on animals, the next phase will decide dosage levels as well as in phase 3 it's tested on people. Through the time it's approved through the Federal Drugs Authority (in U.S.A.) or perhaps the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulation Agency (M.H.R.A.) in Britain, the development costs for a whole new drug can reach five hundred million dollars, which eventually must be recouped from the consumer.