[Suffolkchris]

Cambridge Evening News (UK) 6th June 2007

Drugs company cracks Parkinson's with cure

A SMALL drugs company at Godmanchester has come up with a cure for Parkinson's disease, which could also lead to a cure for Alzheimer's.

Phytopharm has been working for some years on reversing the devastating effects of these two killer diseases and announced last night that it had succeeded.

The drug, Cogane, works by stimulating naturally produced proteins that can regenerate neurons in the brain.

It will be five years, however, before the new drug passes all the regulatory tests and becomes generally available.

Dr Daryl Rees, chief executive of Phytopharm, said: "We have been working on this for a while, reversing the damage caused by these diseases.

"There has only ever been one other drug that could do this, but it had to be pumped into the abdomen to reach the brain, and this was too difficult. Even so, one of the patients involved in trials three years ago in Bristol is still well."

Cogane is different, not least because it can be taken by mouth.

Early trials have shown the drug is safe, and further trials will be going ahead in a matter of months.

News of the breakthrough was given last night at the International Congress of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders in Istanbul.

Dr Rees said: "The work has been partly funded by The Cure Parkinson's Trust, and they are very excited."

Tom Isaacs, co-founder of the trust, said: "Cogane offers a very real prospect of a better treatment for Parkinson's and the potential to completely restore motor function."

Dr Rees said the same approach could cure Alzheimer's, but added that it's more complex.

Parkinson's, which costs billions of pounds around the world in healthcare, affects up to 200 people per 100,000.

Bold headline in more than one way!!

Chris

[paula_w]

if this proves to be true, we all will get the best of both worlds here. a natural substance that produces GDNF......where's the dance?

i'm not ready to believe the word cure yet, but do you suppose.........??

paula

[Ibken]

If true, this is the best news to come down the PD pike EVER!

Paula, anybody, what short of financing Cogane's development, can we do to expedite it's way into the market? I don't wanna wait 5 YEARS!
I want it now.
Everett, as chief white rat researcher and sleuth, please get busy and find out what plant has the magic ingredient.....an asian plant with steroids that encourage neuronal growth....WHEEEEEEE!

Ibby

[paula_w]

My husband says find out what it is and start growing it, eating it, chewing on the stalks, etc. etc.

Ibby, we will be on it llke flies on flypaper..no they are dead... but you know what I mean.

paula

[maryfrances]

Chris,

Wow!!! If this is true, this is great news!!!
I don't wanna wait 5 years either though.
I want it NOW, too!!!!

Thanks for sharing this, Chris!

Mary Frances

[Ronhutton]

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/busi...63ef4da7b6.lpf

Some more info on Cogane.
Ron

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Phytopharm waiting for big breakthrough



Richard Dixey is still calling investors when I arrive at his office the day after trial results on Phytopharm's Alzheimer's drug, Cogane.

"My feeling is we should still be in with a shout," he says.

The trail was to test the safety of Cogane, and lasted three months. The safety aspects proved fine - a lot better than anything currently on the market - but the placebo group perked up about the same as those getting the real thing.

Dr Dixey puts it down to the amount of medical attention they were all getting during the procedure. Stimulating. Cogane, a type of steroid which triggers nerve cells in the brain to sprout and re-connect with their neighbours, might have proved its worth more positively given a longer trial.

Either way, the shares have lost half their value, and the investors needed those calls from Phytopharm's ceo.

The thing is, Cogane works brilliantly in rats. When it was tried on elderly, senile rodents, there was a sudden return of memory. In the animal trials, rats of all ages were taught to go through a hole into the light to fetch a piece of food.

It's the going into the light bit which goes against their nature, but they can overcome this, knowing there is food out there, and a month after being trained, the younger rats remembered, while their great grandparents did not, except they did after a few doses of Cogane.

If it does work in humans, Cogane is going to be among the most important drugs of our time. It will not only halt Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, but re-wind the clock, actually make people better.

Cogane is the only drug right now with the potential to do this, and with dementia one of the fastest-growing problems in a world where we are all living into senility, there is going to be huge demand.

Even existing drugs, which don't work, according to Dr Dixey, are meeting a market worth $2.5 billion a year, which is not the least reason why Phytopharm's investors are keen to be reassured that Cogane remains on track. It does. Discussions are on-going with licensing partners around the world.

Dr Dixey is used to disappointment, although the Cogane set-back is nothing compared with the hair-loss story of 2001 when the placebo group rubbing E45 cream into their scalps instead of P45, became more hairy.

The balm for baldness had come unstuck, and then last year Pfizer withdrew from its £23m collaborative deal with Phytopharm over the obesity drug culled from a rare South African plant.

Never mind, Unilever was quickly on board and P57 is now being developed as a food to stop people wanting food, if that makes any sense.

The plant, which grows very slowly, singularly and in the desert, is called Hoodia, and I couldn't help but mention to Dr Dixey that every other site on the internet these days is selling it.

"It's all a complete fraud," he says. "Nobody else is growing any. We have had a Land Rover out in the desert locating it plant by plant and relaying the co-ordinate via satellite."

Hoodia is what the bushmen used to eat before going on their hunting trips, to stave off hunger. People have been eating it for centuries, but to satisfy the appetite of the western world obese, Phytopharm has had to find a way of producing massive quantities. All is going according to plan, with huge acreages sewn in South Africa and steadily achieving their slow growth, although Dr Dixey says the variety of hoodia his team has discovered, grows faster than any other.

Even so, it's a slow business, biotech, or, more specifically for Phytopharm, botanics. The company, based in a gorgeous Georgian house and grounds in Godmanchester, has been going for 14 years and seen £40m pumped into it.

Dr Dixey does not think this is all that much: "Not when it will alter the face of medicine," he says. "I believe profoundly in the need to advance medicine."

Perhaps for the sake of the shareholders, he adds: "Biotech remains, potentially, the most profitable investment across all the sectors. The market for P57 is just gobsmacking, $12 billion now, and everything available at the moment is just snake oil."

He does not pretend that it isn't high risk, the highest, but that goes with the territory, and is not confined to trial results. Phytopharm has not had a broker for the past year, the previous one frightened off by animal rights extremists who mistakenly targeted the Godmanchester company's suppliers.

They could not have got it more wrong, as the only product the company does have on the market is Phytopica, a natural treatment for animal dermatitis.

Phytopharm currently has just 37 staff, all very securely housed. Most are shareholders, and if the company hits the jackpot with Cogane or P57, so will they, millionaires, all of them, although Dr Dixey entered the Sunday Times Rich List four years ago.

The share price has always been highly volatile, again, par for the course, but Dr Dixey says it is trading at 10 per cent of the option value at the moment.

"I live with appalling stress," he says, "but I have got used to it - the endless pressure from all quarters.

"I want to return my shareholders money, but I want to develop medicines, and it's a risky business."

JC


06 December 2005

[aftermathman]

2003,

http://www.phytopharm.co.uk/aboutus/...folio/?id=2234

I can't help thinking that if it was that good then something would have happened sooner. No parallel with GDNF as the company wants to progress the product.

Looks a bit like pre hype to get funding but good luck to them, anyone trying to help us has my thanks.

Neil.

[paula_w]

Good grief I must stop posting while falling asleep - what a sentimental rant above.

We obviously have to watch this one with interest but to my knowledge so far, this substance is farther into Alzheimer's testing than PD. They had great success with preclinical PD research and want to continue.

That information may change by the end if the day.... who knows? There is reason for hope. I think I met these people at BIOS - they knew Tom Isaacs, and if so, he said that he thinks the substance causes production of GDNF, but that is what the continued research funding was to determine. He said it worked with animals.

But then there is a stem cell vote this week......along with big announcements of alternate 'cures' and procedures. I hope phytopharm gets their funding - it's the only way to find out. I'm cautiously hopeful.

paula

[reverett123]

Rumor has it that Cogane started out as a rare member of the same family as Dong Quai, a common supplement used for menopausal troubles. But there are other, more common and better researched, possibilities. For example:

1: Neurosignals. 2005;14(1-2):34-45.Click here to read Links
Search for natural products related to regeneration of the neuronal network.
Tohda C, Kuboyama T, Komatsu K.

Research Center for Ethnomedicines, Institute of Natural Medicine, Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Sugitani, Japan.

The reconstruction of neuronal networks in the damaged brain is necessary for the therapeutic treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. We have screened the neurite outgrowth activity of herbal drugs, and identified several active constituents. In each compound, neurite outgrowth activity was investigated under amyloid-beta-induced neuritic atrophy. Most of the compounds with neurite regenerative activity also demonstrated memory improvement activity in Alzheimer's disease-model mice. Protopanaxadiol-type saponins in Ginseng drugs and their metabolite, M1 (20-O-beta-D-glucopyranosyl-(20S)-protopanaxadiol), showed potent regeneration activity for axons and synapses, and amelioration of memory impairment. Withanolide derivatives (withanolide A, withanoside IV, and withanoside VI) isolated from the Indian herbal drug Ashwagandha, also showed neurite extension in normal and damaged cortical neurons. Trigonelline, a constituent of coffee beans, demonstrated the regeneration of dendrites and axons, in addition to memory improvement. 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel

PMID: 15956813 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[Stitcher]

Cogane, a type of steroid which triggers nerve cells in the brain to sprout and re-connect with their neighbours, might have proved its worth more positively given a longer trial.

Just as every one wishes for a cure...I certainly do also.
Especially after spending hours totally "off" as I did this morning, and also two weeks ago, and will do again on the 18th of June, etc.
Being completely off is a hideous affair that I wish on NO ONE.
My tremor is so bad my arm muscles don't just ache, but the hurt badly from the flailing.
I am sure any DBS recipient can attest to this.

My biggest wish, since I am long past a complete cure, is to see someone like the 20-year old I know who was just dxd never see a bottle agonist, let alone carbidopa/levodopa. That for someone like her a cure is provided at the time of dx.

Maybe I have been spending too much time in Philadelphia with the CERE-120 trial, preparing for surgery....where I have been for the past two days (surgical evaluation, etc...then came here before doing anything else when I got home...)

maybe I am just out in left field
Probably I am being too negative in the light of this excited thread....and I am on the parade

I won't put my full trust into its potential "cure" effect, anymore than I would for any other thearpy...swallowed or injected into the brain or dosed directly into the small intestine (duodopa)...until it has been tested for a decade. Then if it has wonderous effect, including a cure, I will believe in it.

Just as with anything in the past, there are so many unknowns:

• does it plateau
• will it plateau and then wear-down over time
• will the body come to a point in time when it no longer responds to the therapy, if ongoing treatment is needed
• after an unknown period of time there is a physical negative effect...steroids of any kind a pretty powerful therapies

all you guys!!
to everyone in this forum
Yes, I have had a humbling day indeed.

p.s. my wake up call today was that in-clinic it was ALS day. I am very happy to have PD, as odd as this may sound.