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Cancer Fighting Drug Found in Dirt

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Apr 26, 2007 04:17 AM
from the a-shovel-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away dept.
Biotech Science
firesquirt writes "From an article in LiveScience, the bark of certain yew trees can yield a medicine that fights cancer. Now scientists find the dirt that yew trees grow in can supply the drug as well, suggesting a new way to commercially harvest the medicine."
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  • Next headline... (Score:5, Funny)

    by wbren (682133) on Thursday April 26 2007, @04:23AM (#18881989) Homepage
    "Pharmaceutical company patents dirt; Critics claim prior art"

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by delire (809063)
      Your joke points to a sad reality however, that it's only through patenting cures (ie having a monopoly over a cure) can pharmaceutical companies (free enterprises) get the investment capital to develop medicines. Cures are IP, traded and guarded.

      Moreso, the last thing any pharmaceutical monopoly can afford is for people to get better very easily. For this reason cures are highly guarded discoveries: there are many cures around we don't have access to, and perhaps never will, either because they threaten

      • Your joke points to a sad reality however, that it's only through patenting cures (ie having a monopoly over a cure) can pharmaceutical companies (free enterprises) get the investment capital to develop medicines. Cures are IP, traded and guarded.

        I dunno, they do a fairly good job of charging a fortune for diagnostic equipment, consumables, etc. For example, diabetics' glucometers take tiny little sticks which seem to be mainly plastic and cotton wool, and are used and disposed of at a rate of four or five

      • Re:Next headline... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bunratty (545641) on Thursday April 26 2007, @07:03AM (#18882797)

        For this reason cures are highly guarded discoveries: there are many cures around we don't have access to, and perhaps never will, either because they threaten an existing sickness market or because the IP pushes the price up beyond our reach. Just because we hear about a cure doesn't mean we'll ever see that cure in the wild
        Surely there are researchers involved in finding these hidden cures you refer to. Why don't any of them blow the whistle on this massive conspiracy?

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by delire (809063)

          Why don't any of them blow the whistle on this massive conspiracy?
          Because it's not a consipiracy. It's good common sense capitalism.
          • Surely even multi-billionaires have loved ones who get sick from these diseases? Why don't they pay to have the drugs developed so the cures can be available, even if only to those who are rich enough to afford it? Generally it takes less than a billion dollars to have the drug fully approved by the FDA. It takes much less to fund a small clinical trial to investigate whether a drug is effective. There are plenty of billionaires around with enough money to throw around to develop these cures, if only they e
          • Because it's not a consipiracy. It's good common sense capitalism.

            So, what you're saying is that all of the researchers who worked so long, and hard when they developed the cure for muscular distrophy back in the 1980s are being paid hush money, and that's why they have those telethons?

            I'll admit that at a glance it looks like you could make more money treating the symptoms than curing the disease. The problem is that once a cure is developed, you have to suppress the researchers, many of whom are mot

          • Re:Next headline... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by LurkerXXX (667952) on Thursday April 26 2007, @10:06AM (#18884935)
            Take off the tinfoil hat. I'm a medical researcher. If I discover a cure for a disease, I get famous in my field, guaranteed funding, and get invited to speak at research Universities around the world. Maybe even win a Nobel prize. It's all pluses. What do I get to keep it secret if I'm a researcher? Nada.

            Uninformed conspiracy nuts seem to think Pharm companies do all the medical research. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) will spend more than 28+ Billion on medical research this year (your tax dollars at work). I do research funded by them. My work is all published in journals you are free to subscribe to, or browse for free at your local research university's library.

              • Re:Next headline... (Score:5, Insightful)

                by LurkerXXX (667952) on Thursday April 26 2007, @11:57AM (#18886979)
                I assure you, being in the field and being involved in the patent process, I am much better versed on the topic than you. Thanks for the offer to look around, but I've already done it. A lot. I do it for a living.

                There is no grand conspiracy as you would have others believe to keep cures hidden. As I said, NIH does most of the basic research for exploring biology and finding new drugs. Pharm companies do some drug exploration, but the bulk of their research dollars are spent on clinical trials which are *extremely* expensive. Many times there are candidate drugs which don't go on to clinical trials. These are not 'hidden'. Anyone is free to look at the literature to see them. And many researchers I know who have published new exciting results, try to get a story in the more general public news. This gets their name out there, and the Institute/University they work at gets some press that they love. Once again, not hidden. No conspiracy.

                Patents are an entirely different issue. Patents are public record. Once again, they aren't hidden from you. Drugs generally have a use patent, so it's easy to see exactly what disease they are for the treatment of. Nothing hidden. Also patents don't last forever. Anyone with a patented drug that works will try to sell it like made for several years, because the patent is going to expire, and then anyone will be able to make a generic version of it, with no patent worries.

                If the company patented a drug and sits on it because they don't think they will recoup as much as it would cost to do the trials/manufacturing, well, the patent is still going to expire, so others will be able to use it then. Nothing hidden again. No conspiracy.

                Now, if the original company didn't want to go through the expense of doing clinical trials for it because they didn't think they would recoup their money, no one else is likely to want to foot the bill entirely either, since when they get it passed, all their competitors are then free to manufacture generic versions as well.

                It all boils down to clinical trials, and who pays for the huge expense of them. No one wants to foot the bill for unpatentable or patent-expired drugs because it's 100+ million down hole for the company doing the trials, and a free ride for all their competitors. It's just terrible business sense. No 'conspiracy' involved at all.

                Put away the tinfoil hats. It comes down to simple business decisions a 12-year old should be able to grasp. Blaming pharm companies and academic researchers for 'conspiring' to keep them off the shelf is simply stupid.

                If you want a better system for orphan drugs, then lobby your congressmen to expand NIH funding to include drug trials for orphan drugs. Public dollars would be well worth spending in that area.

                  • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                    by LurkerXXX (667952)
                    Ok, I'm going to be silly and feed the anonymous troll...

                    Mostly, I agree with you; but, there are cases where the "tinfoil hat" IS the business decision that the twelve-year-old can grasp:

                    "Cure vs treatment". The profit motive (by itself) would far rather sell a treatment than a cure.

                    So they are hiding the cures because they want to sell a treatment? Who is hiding it? Who discovered it that has that motive? As I said before, NIH dollars fund the most basic research which leads to new biology/drugs. Pha
      • Ah, once again, it's the favorite conspiracy theory of the modern age. Cures everywhere, locked up by IP. Somebody finds anti-cancer dirt, but nobody sees enough profit to bring it to market, so people still get sick.

        If only it were so simple. So you've discovered some dirt that fights cancer -- so what? We have as many compounds that fight cancer as we have compounds that cause cancer. If you want to really cure people, we're talking scientific medicine, not feel-good natural herbal supplements. That
          • Even if a bunch of bureaucrats had the ability to successfully direct a research programme of such a scale, every dollar you'd save from the "eevil corparashunz" would cost ten in administration.
    • ... 8 year old sued for telling friend to eat dirt.

  • In the greater scheme of things... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mudshark (19714) on Thursday April 26 2007, @04:28AM (#18882015)
    ... it's not all about yew, after all. It's the dirt from whence yew came, and where yew shall ultimately return....

  • Time and time again... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26 2007, @04:31AM (#18882033)
    ...we discover these things that the Earth provides us, and yet we learn nothing of protecting it from ourselves.

    Silly monkeys.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Fuck Earth. Take your tree-loving sacrificial rain-dance bullshit back to whatever liberal leaf-licking college you barely crawled tripping off LSD out of with your "degree". We really don't need this tripe. Do you honestly think us "silly monkeys" would have even made a discovery such as this without technology built by a society powered by the very resources you likely eschew? Sure, we've found yet another cancer fighting drug (which is a pretty insubstantial claim, go hit up Google for "cancer fighting d

        • The fact that humans have a pretty significant negative impact on nature is a fact. What's wrong with being reminded of that FACT once in awhile?

          Humans have a significant impact on their environment but who's to say its a negative imapact. If we want to play the part of nature for a moment and begin to think in timescales of billions of years then human activity so far is utterly insignificant and since nature has no point of view it's impossible to say whether that insignificant activity was either a posit

      • Re:Time and time again... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Skrynesaver (994435) on Thursday April 26 2007, @06:14AM (#18882487) Homepage
        This is not an alternative to anything, this is a chemical which can be found in yew bark. Do you consider Asprin an alternative remedy? it can be harvested from willow bark after all. As yew is a highly toxic plant I don't recommend chewing on it in the hope of a cure, similarly the concentration of salicylic acid in willow bark is variable and chewing on willow bark will give you ulcers as a result.

        Bayer managed to patent not Asprin itself but the process of synthesising it. As I don't believe you can patent discoveries even in the US.

        • imilarly the concentration of salicylic acid in willow bark is variable and chewing on willow bark will give you ulcers as a result.


          Hence the reason you concentrate the salicylic acid from the willow bark by making a tea out of it.
      • They are ostracised because they are nutcases and/or quacks who produce no results, but profit from selling people false hope and placebo effect.

        You seem to imply that it is somehow hypocritical to use one natural remedy but not another, but the difference is that this one works while the other ones don't.
        • Produce no results? How many "cured" cancer patients do you know? I've yet to ever hear any doctor say a patient is "cured". They always say the cancer could reappear. That doesn't sound much like a cure to me.

          I also think you're mistaking the meaning of "results". Results have varying degrees, and while some "modern" medicine does have more effective, long-term results, you'll find plenty of people who use homeopathic options also have results. Most of those people also note a better standard of livi
          • That doesn't sound much like a cure to me.

            Who's talking about a cure? Other than quacks trying to sell people false hope?

            you'll find plenty of people who use homeopathic options also have results.

            You are familiar with the placebo effect, I would hope.

            You also seem to be discounting placebo effect. Placebo effect can be very powerful, and I'm sure you can find some cases where a person was "cured" with a placebo.

            I guess you are. And you know why I discount it? Because it relies on lying to the patient and ha

  • Here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El Lobo (994537) on Thursday April 26 2007, @04:44AM (#18882083)
    I HATE when people and even pseudoscientific articles talk about a medicine against "cancer". Hell, there is NO cancer. There are CANCERS. Lung cancer has a completly different nature than, say, bllod cancer, ot colon cancer, or skin cancer. Yes, all of them are chaotic grow of the cells, but their nature, symptoms, erradication and even cell behaviour is completly different. It's therefore naive to talk about a "cure for cancer". It's like saying: a drug against virus has been found. Hell! WHAT virus? They are all different!

    • Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Interesting)

      by VirusEqualsVeryYes (981719) on Thursday April 26 2007, @04:59AM (#18882127)
      But do most people know about these differences? Hell, I'll admit that even I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is that mutations in cells's DNA can cause them to replicate uncontrollably, hence cancer. There are differences in lung/blod/colon/skin cancer? Sounds plausible! ... but I have no idea what they are. To me, and to most normal people, "cancer" encompasses all cancers.

      I guess it's like saying a certain finding advances "science". But wait, you say, there are a lot of sciences! Yes, there are, and the finding most likely only really advances one of the sciences ... and yet, we all understand what is meant when we say something advances "science".
      • That's exactly why these news articles shouldn't just say "cure for cancer" - because nobody will know that that encompasses a whole range of completely different diseases. Some caused by bacteria, some by viruses, some by mutations, some by inhaling smoke, etc etc etc. The masses will never understand that if nobody tells them.

        • Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)

          by krotkruton (967718) on Thursday April 26 2007, @06:32AM (#18882603)
          I don't think people are really that ignorant about the disease. Ask someone for one of the causes of skin cancer and you'll probably get "too much sun without sunscreen", or ask for one for lung cancer and you'll get "cigarette smoke". I think most people understand that there are many different types of cancer that can all be caused by different things, but I don't know if they understand that a cure for one might not be a cure for all, if that was even the initial point of this thread. On the other hand, someone may very well find a single cure for all forms of cancer, in which case, is it really wrong to call it a cure for cancer?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by pointbeing (701902)

        But do most people know about these differences? Hell, I'll admit that even I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is that mutations in cells's DNA can cause them to replicate uncontrollably, hence cancer. There are differences in lung/blod/colon/skin cancer? Sounds plausible! ... but I have no idea what they are. To me, and to most normal people, "cancer" encompasses all cancers.

        A common misconception. Cancer is a catch-all term for more than 100 diseases that display similar characteristics - the ability to mask itself from the host immune system, angiogenesis and some cell replication tricks that normal cells can't pull off.

        The spousal unit has been undergoing treatment for Stage IV breast cancer for almost eight years - it had already metastasized to her lungs by the time she was diagnosed. Breast cancer in your lungs is still breast cancer and at least as far as medical

    • Yes and no. Roughly half of all cancers are related to a defect in a protein called p53. There are various p53 defects that can cause cancer and very different cancers can result depending on which cells have which defects. But, for example, if a way were found to introduce wild-type (non-mutated) p53 DNA into these cells via gene therapy, then you'd have a single cure for roughly half of all cancers.

      There are similarities in many cancers in how they operate and often, a single drug can be effective against

  • And you though RMS was just a smelly hippie (Score:3, Funny)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Thursday April 26 2007, @04:51AM (#18882109)
    When it turns out he is a shower dodger to avoid cancer.

  • Wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tawg (1078217) on Thursday April 26 2007, @05:01AM (#18882137)
    Now this is what i call a cancer Treetment.

  • Pacific Yew (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tawg (1078217) on Thursday April 26 2007, @05:21AM (#18882245)
    It's quite interesting to note that one of the species of yew mentioned (i assume the most useful at yielding the drug) has been classified as NT (Near threatened) [wikipedia.org].
    This basically means the species is "considered threatened with extinction in the near future". With such a large area of yew trees producing such a small amount of drug, careful measures are going to have to be taken so as not to kill off our new hope for a cancer cure. It's also quite interesting to note that the yew only grows to about 15metres, and so much smaller than what i would know as a (european) yew tree.
  • Drug companies do this all the time [wikipedia.org]. It's a hell of a lot faster and cheaper than rational drug design [wikipedia.org].

  • So much for our parents telling us not to eat dirt (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Antony-Kyre (807195) on Thursday April 26 2007, @05:52AM (#18882385)
    So much for our parents telling us not to eat dirt as kids.

  • Cancer Fighting Drug Found in Dirt (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rik Sweeney (471717) on Thursday April 26 2007, @06:00AM (#18882425) Homepage
    *tch*

    The things people throw away these days...

  • It isn't a new medicine just a new way to get it (Score:3, Informative)

    by MSRedfox (1043112) on Thursday April 26 2007, @06:12AM (#18882475)
    The headline makes it sound like a new wonder drug was found. According to the article, this drug was found in 1967. So it's been around for quite a while. They've just found that the soil around the trees end up with the drug in it to. Thus when they harvest the drug, they can harvest the soil to get more of it at one time. Nothing new cure wise, just a better way for drug companies to produce a product.

  • It's a good drug (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was one of the guinea-pigs that tested it. It worked incredibly well, better than the alternative at the time which hadn't worked for me leaving me with a choice of taking part in the experiment or trying a large dose of the other medicine with little chance of success.

    I'd heard at the time that it was becoming viable because they'd found a way of synthesising it using chemicals extracted from the needles of the tree, so reducing the impact on the tree. If they can get hold of it with less impact on the t

  • Hopefully (Score:3, Funny)

    by chanrobi (944359) on Thursday April 26 2007, @06:51AM (#18882711)
    It'll be dirt cheap for those who need it
  • I guess that thing I said as a kid to go ahead and eat my dirty food was true (after dropping on ground):

    "god made dirt, dirt don't hurt...."

  • It's not the tree - it's the microbes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by csoto (220540) on Thursday April 26 2007, @07:15AM (#18882871)
    Most people forget that all higher organisms depend heavily on micribiota for their survival. For example, most of the complex micronutrients (e.g. B-comlplex vitamins) in plants are generated in soil bacteria. For these drugs, look to the rhizobacteria as the source of the genes for these compounds. The commensal relationships these bacteria sustain with particular plant species could be important, but it's possible these things could be grown in vitro and yield a nice industrial solution.
  • So it seems those new age, tree-hugging hippies weren't "barking" mad after all. They "yew" what they were doing all along. And I guess that, as far as pharmaceutical companies are concerned, money does grow on trees after all. Hey, that's "tree" of a kind so far. I'd better stop now and see if I can afford a mortgage on a tree house.

  • Well, there's a new one... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Khyber (864651) <khyberkitsune@gmail.com> on Thursday April 26 2007, @08:01AM (#18883241) Journal
    Let the strip-mining operations to cure cancer begin!
  • Yews control the medecine market.
  • it's well-known that black walnut trees make sure they have less competition for water and nutrients by leaching poison out their roots.

    so why didn't anybody think to check the ground around yew trees earlier for taxol?

    moral: everybody fouls their nest. expect it. what, you never heard of an alpha geek who got fired for being the alpha?
  • Did anyone else think of this movie [imdb.com] too? You know, the scene where she buries her boyfriend in the medicinal dirt to save his life?
    • Does that mean you will now be soiling yourself to get well? Coz I grew out of those a few years back...
    • Chance are it won't be as cheap[ to mprocess as you think. Transporting dirt on a medical "clean" way will be expensive along with extracting the drug and such. It will be more likely that it would be synthesized if possible and this will give new sources of reference to play with.

      Even of the drug isn't able to be synthesized, planting something that could extract the drug and then processing that might be a better solution. There are certain plants that absorb chemicals/minerals/vitamins and a lot of other

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