Posted on 04/05/2022 12:37:57 PM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers have engineered a harmless strain of gut bacteria to produce a key drug used to treat Parkinson's disease patients
New research presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting has demonstrated the potential for genetically engineered bacteria to be an effective Parkinson’s disease treatment. The researchers created a bacteria that can synthesize a consistent source of medicine inside a patient’s gut, and animal tests have demonstrated it is safe and effective.
The idea of engineering bacteria to serve as medical treatments is not new. For years scientists have experimented with ways of modifying bacteria to fit our needs, from engineering bacteria to eat up excess ammonia in a human body to helping bacteria hunt down colorectal cancer cells.
Of course, before an idea like this is ready for mainstream clinical uses a number of hurdles need to be overcome. It's one thing to offer a patient controlled doses of a drug via a pill, but limiting the growth of living microbes engineered to synthesize those same therapeutic molecules in the human gut is a whole different challenge.
New research from a team of scientists has presented an incremental step forward in engineering a novel strain of the human probiotic E.coli Nissle 1917 that has been developed to continually synthesize a Parkinson’s disease drug known as L-DOPA.
L-DOPA is a molecule that acts as a precursor to dopamine and it has been the gold-standard treatment for Parkinson’s patients for decades. Doctors have found that after around five years of L-DOPA treatment patients often develop side effects known as dyskinesias. These side effects are thought to be related to the lack of a continuous source of the drug to the brain.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/947476
Safe and effective!
When they were done with that, they drug in the belly button.
Don’t worry, these bacteria will NEVER escape your gut. Nope, can’t happen. Nothing to worry about.
What could possibly go wrong.
I’ve seen this movie before.
It doesn’t end well.................
The instant I saw “Safe and Effective TM” I became worried.
The politicalization of science has destroyed my faith in the integrity of researchers, drug companies and politicians.
Safe and effective apparently means something very different to them.
Safe, for them, to effectively become wealthy.........................
Will never be a commercial product.
Cures are not profitable in the long term.
I remember being horrified when I first learned about ‘planned obsolescence’ from Mad magazine.
Great it will become transmitted to people who dont need it.
This is a terrible idea.
It’s like COVID-19 is a “good idea.”
Implanting a source in the patient which cannot be turned off seems like a really bad idea.
A source that can spread via contagion to other members of the household seems like an even worse idea.
Not only that....suppose patients develop other side effects from the L-dopa( myriad)....look it up for eye opener....then how does patient get rid of the bacteria? Plus L-dopa is metabolized very quickly once in the blood and very little gets into the brain. That is why they add a drug which inhibits the enzyme which destroys L-dopa..(a dopa decarboxylase inhibitor....called Carbidopa). The combination is in a medication called Sinemet(now generic).
Another gee-whiz report that should have been vetted by a neuroendocrinologist.
TREAT or CURE? Because there will never be a CURE for heart disease or cancer. There’s too much money to be made TREATing them over a lifetime. I suspect it would be similar for Parkinson’s.
I agree. But, aren't some of these bacteria highly sensitive to an antibiotic gut flush? So, turn-off could be taken into account.
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