MsLedd on 19/3/2006 at 10:37
Hmmm... what's wrong with this picture?
Quote:
The body overseeing testing and licensing is the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which is funded by the industry it is supposed to police.
Sounds like a U.S. Government arrangement :weird:
OnionBob on 19/3/2006 at 11:53
Quote Posted by Sypha Nadon
See, it's stories like
this that make me hesitant to try out medication. Damn it!:eww:
TenTailedCat on 19/3/2006 at 12:14
I mentioned this in another thread but I'll give you it here. I've been chatting online to someone who's on the periphery of this situation and she gave me a run down on the basics:
Quote:
Well the first thing that we found out was what exactly this drug was. The name of it is TGN1412 and it is a antibody against CD28. CD28 is expressed on T-cells and members of the CD28 family play a critical role in controlling the adaptive arm of the immune response. CD28 is expressed constitutively on almost all CD4 T-cells and approximately 50% of CD8 T-cells. Interestingly CD28 is not entirely T-cell specific, but has been found on cells of other lineages as well. CD28 is involved in T-cell proliferation, cell survival and cytokine production.
In preclinical trials, TGN1412 was seen to be effective in treatment of B-CLL (B-cell chronic lymphoid leukaemia often is able to develop with no sort of immune response from the body. Apparently this drug was able to activate T-cells to have a response against them). Also they were testing the drug for treatment towards rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic inflammatory disease of the joints. Apparently T-cell activation by the drug resulted in expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines.
Looks good right, so what went wrong? This is what we were trying to figure out, and unfortunately since I'm not an immunologist I don't completely understand all the arguements, but I'll try to present them here.
First of all it does appear as if a massive autoimmune response was mounted (the body basically attacks itself) which would explain the inflammation and organ failure. It is possible that because this drug was meant for treatment of a malignant cell population in CLL, that population may not be present in normal individuals and therefore the drug did not preform as expected.
So this probably has little to do with animal testing, it worked fine on the animals because they were probably infected with whatever disease the drug is meant to cure. The problem likely came from the fact that the human subjects were healthy.
Vigil on 19/3/2006 at 12:26
Interesting, though I would expect it to be standard practice to test on a control group of healthy animals as well as infected animals.
TenTailedCat on 19/3/2006 at 12:34
Well I haven't read all the articles but wasn't there some suggestion that the company involved were a bunch of jobsworths and may not have been following correct procedure?
Next time I speak to the woman in question I'll ask her if she knows anything about that.
d0om on 19/3/2006 at 16:45
Most drugs you would expect to be out of your system after a week or two at most at the low doses they are taking, but as it affects the immune system it sounds a lot more dangerous. Once you have activated an immune response to something then the activated immune cells keep reproducing until they have destroyed the threat. If the threat is you then your a little bit fucked...
SubJeff on 19/3/2006 at 18:09
Those statements you quoted mean completely different things Vasquez.
Vasquez on 19/3/2006 at 18:26
How nice of you to tell me what I meant with that comment, thanks!
SubJeff on 19/3/2006 at 18:39
Excuse me? What do you mean by that?
TheGreatGodPan on 19/3/2006 at 19:02
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
To be honest, this sort of thing is bound to happen so long as drugs companies keep earning such obscene profits. Scientific progress and furthering the welfare of humanity are a distant second and third to making a huge fat pile of cash for shareholders.
I mean, technically they're only allowed to offer money to human guinea pigs to cover "expenses", but in reality, their payments act as inducements to persuade the impoverished in society to partake in dangerous and barely-regulated tests.
Yes, everything will improve once they start losing money. And there is absolutely no connection between making money in pharmaceuticals and scientific progress or improving anyone's welfare.
Personally, I think they should be allowed to offer whatever the fuck they want to prospective test subjects. As long as you can say no, who is anyone else to question their decision?
Before pounding on the table for more regulation or major systemic changes in drug testing I think we should examine the rates of such incidents in testing overrall rather than just paying attention to one story that got a bunch of media attention.
