Charles R. Yates, Pharm.D., PhD, and colleagues Duane Miller, PhD, and Waleed Gaber, PhD, from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (Memphis, USA) and Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX, USA), revealed that by administering this new agent, beginning 24 hours after radiation exposure, increased survival in lab animals by three-fold compared to placebo.
The study findings were presented at the 2012 American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) annual meeting and Exposition, the world’s largest pharmaceutical sciences meeting, held in Chicago (IL, USA) on October 14-18, 2012. “Development of drugs for individuals who are exposed to high-dose radiation in a public health emergency has been a priority since the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” said Dr. Yates. “The ultimate goal is wide dissemination of noninvasive treatments after 24 hours of a mass casualty.”
For oral treatments, the most typical noninvasive delivery method, the high chance of vomiting after radiation exposure was shown to be challenging. Injectable medication is frequently recommended as the next choice of therapy, which comes with its own challenges. For example, training is frequently needed for injections. To try to resolve this hurdle, Dr. Yates and his coworkers devised a new delivery system that can be applied directly to the skin, similar to an adhesive bandage. “We are extremely proud to have exclusive rights to this exciting technology,” said W. Shannon McCool, DPh, president and CEO of RxBio (Johnson City, TN, USA), the company that has licensed the technology from the University of Tennessee Research Foundation.
This drug was also very successful in animal models where radiation exposure is combined with skin wounds--a probably circumstance in which people are exposed to shrapnel from dirty bombs or associated burn wounds.
Source:
medimaging.net
