Current
State of the Art:
Colon
cancer, IBS, Crohn’s disease and colitis present as some of the most difficult
diseases to treat with the medications available currently. Treatment can be as
drastic as surgery, chemotherapy, medications, such as cortisone, which can have
sometimes serious and debilitating side effects. Colon cancer is treated with
radiation and chemotherapy. Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are thought
to be related to the autoimmune response and present many complications for
which no single effective therapy exists.
Problems
with the Current Art:
Use
of chemotherapy and radiation to treat cancer patients leads to devastating side
effects including weight loss, loss of energy (fatigue), hair loss,
susceptibilty to infections, negative effects on healthy organ systems, among
others.
Frequently,
use of the cortisone family of drugs to treat Crohn’s disease and ulcerative
colitis leads to systemic issues affecting healthy organs and significantly
limits the quality of life for such patients.
IBS
is currently treated with drugs that control neurotransmitter re-uptake and
present with limited success rates that affect other organ systems as
well.
Advantages
of the Novel Invention:
The
short chain fatty acids that are part of the normal biochemical pathway serve as
a natural breakthrough method to administer pro-drugs that directly treat the
source of the disease. The inventors have discovered the use of fatty acid
esters attached to amino acids which will serve as substrates for the transport
system. Use of a well-characterized amino acid transport system, which is highly
up-regulated in diseases such as colon cancer cells, serves to better assist in
the transport of pro-drug compounds with fewer side effects in the
gastrointestinal system.
Case
Number: GHSU 2004-024