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[Michaelangelica]

Daisies Lead Scientists Down Path To New Leukemia Drug

Long used as a preventive for migraines; scientists have discovered a new use for this pretty little self seeding daisy. It may help in the fight against leukemia.

The Rochester team has been leading the investigation of this promising therapy on the deadly blood cancer for nearly five years.
And to bring it from a laboratory concept to patient studies in that time is very fast progress in the drug development world, said Craig T. Jordan, Ph.D., senior author of the Blood article and director of Translational Research for Hematologic Malignancies at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Clinical trials are expected to begin in England by the end of 2007. Investigators expect to initially enroll about a dozen adult volunteers who've been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or other types of blood or lymph cancers, Jordan said.

Under development is dimethylamino-parthenolide (DMAPT), a form of parthenolide (PTL) that is derived from a daisy-like plant known as feverfew or bachelor's button. DMAPT is a water-soluble agent that scientists believe will selectively target leukemia at the stem-cell level, where the malignancy is born.
This is significant because standard chemotherapy does not strike deep enough to kill cancer at the roots, thus resulting in relapses. Even the most progressive new therapies, such as Gleevec, are effective only to a degree because they do not reach the root of the cancer.

ScienceDaily: Daisies Lead Scientists Down Path To New Leukemia Drug
There is hope, and there is no hope.
There is no such thing as false hope.-MA,/07