Repair genetic disease

Israeli research finds common antibiotic can repair genetic diseases

... power to repair genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis, cancer and muscular dystrophy.

Linda Sue O'Grady alerted me to this.  I just showed it to MoSup and she went nuts, which tells me there's something to it.  Think of the irony if this research leads to repairing the Muslim DNA strands that make them want to kill everyone who won't do their bidding (which drug should also work on liberal democrats)? “ By Karin Kloosterman   April 26, 2009 Antibiotics are no doubt the wonder drug of the 20th century. Before them, people could die from simple bacterial infections. Now, new groundbreaking research from Israel shows that a common antibiotic has the power to repair genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis, cancer and muscular dystrophy. The Israeli team headed by Prof. Timor Baasov of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, has modified a common antibiotic, one without toxic effects, and which is programmed to fix "nonsense" mutations in genetic diseases. Nonsense mutations are mutations in a sequence of DNA which causes it to prematurely stop reading the RNA, resulting in an incomplete and non-functional protein being created. Since releasing the news of the new compound, called NB54, based on the common antibiotic gentamicin, Baasov has been flooded with queries from investigators all over the globe excited to test it, he tells ISRAEL21c. The findings were published online in March in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Gentamicin is from a group of antibiotics known as aminoglycosides, which are used to treat a wide range of bacterial infections. It is commonly used to treat enlarged prostate glands, chest infections, urinary tract infections and infected wounds or burns. Previous studies find gentamicin can work to counteract genetic diseases when mutations cause disruptions of the development processes of proteins. Compound working in cystic fibrosis The drug enables ribosomes, which carry out protein synthesis, to ignore these genetic disruptions and generate healthy, full-length functional proteins instead. But until now, doctors were not able to prevent the toxic side effects needed for the treatment. Profound hearing loss was one of the unwanted shortcomings of using this antibiotic for treatment. "We have shown our lead compounds are more powerful than existing antibiotics and much less toxic. We also have data on preclinical studies on cystic fibrosis that it works well. This is the very new direction that shows how chemistry can modify toxic compounds to be useful as a drug," says Baasov.   Article ”