Drug
Dependence
July 2, 2013
Meghna Das Thakur, a researcher,
proved that a cancer that can be evolved to be resistant of the drug that is
healing it by withdrawing the drug it could stop the disease spread. She proved
this theory with the vemurafenib, a malignant melanoma drug. The people she
used this drug on shriveled up their melanoma tumors completely. A conflict
with this drug is that the cancer is known to come back after approximately 9
months. The melanomas are driven by a protein mutation called BRAF. This mutation
controls the spread of the cancer cells. The vemurafenib is allowing cancer
cells to not only slow down, but it could even completely eliminate the cancer
for a period of time. This proteins leads to another protein called ERK. This
protein is activated in other ways besides the drug; ERK gives inaccurate
signals to the cell-cycle control mechanism. Thakur did not withdraw the vemurafenib
this time because if she did the ERK would be over-activated and it would stop
working. By using vemurafenib in intervals, Thakur allowed the tumors to stay
under control for much longer than they would have before. Vemurafenib caused
14 out of 19 melanoma patients to slow the growth of their tumors. Drug dependence
is a bad thing because one could not know that the drug they are taking could
be hurting them instead of healing them.
The significance of this drug is that
it gives cancer patients who thought they would die, more time to live
their lives with their families. It is also important because it opened up
research for other cancer drugs. Other cancers could also become immune to the
drugs they are being treated with, and if the patients stop taking the drug, it
could save their life. This is immportant to me because peoples lives will no longer need to be taken from the terrible disease.
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