http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-11-technique-drugs-illnesses.html
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An international team of researchers led by the University of Leicester has "harnessed the power of evolution" to create a new drug for possible use against heart disease, inflammation and other illnesses.
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..."This involves making a particular cell type generate millions of different variants of our protein, selecting the variants that have improved properties and then repeating the cycle until the protein has been changed to a form with the exact properties we want."
To show how the method works, the group took a protein normally found in the body and evolved it into a form that can block a molecule involved in blood vessel growth and inflammation.
This new protein, called a ligand-trap, is now being developed as a potential therapeutic for treating heart disease, inflammation and other illnesses.
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I can't help wonder if the power of evolution could be somehow used to enhance the new cancer treatments I referenced in the last two posts? -for that to work, whether for the combination of two drugs I mentioned in the first post or the virus I referenced in the second post, you would have to somehow efficiently create many variations of each (perhaps genetically engineering cells to secrete millions of different variations of each one just like described in the above link? -but that would be a lot harder to achieve in this case because the variants aren't simple proteins that cells can so readily create but are either drug molecules or, worse, complex virus molecules! ) and then have a way to simultaneously and efficiently test all of them (I guess finding a way to do this truly efficiently would be no mean feat ). Maybe, despite the obvious extreme difficulties of making this work, this is still worth looking in to? -just trying to think of the possibilities.