plasmid racers are short track racers

as bacreria exchange genetic material faster than human competently use antibiotics.


the researcher is silentnon the failure in the us to vaccinate people against tb.


additionally bcg may be used as taught by denise l faustman and g ristori  to treat a variety of duseases


see pubmed.irg faustman dl pubmed.org ristori + bcg  uspto.gov inventor search faustman

Long Island scientists work to repurpose old medicines for new uses

Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Stony Brook Hospital, is studying a leprosy drug to treat drug-resistant TB in children. Photo Credit: Newsday / John Paraskevas 

By Delthia Ricksdelthia.ricks@newsday.comUpdated June 18, 2019 6:00 AM

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As U.S. drug regulators were announcing approval of the first multimillion-dollar medication last month, dozens of medical scientists on Long Island and beyond were quietly working on ways of repurposing old medicines into effective new uses. 

Familiar medications, forgotten ones and those shelved because newer versions pushed them out of favor are poised for new roles in the treatment of an array of medical disorders, including cancer, heart conditions and infectious diseases. Some compounds under consideration for repurposing cost only pennies per dose.

“The repurposing of drugs opens new possibilities for medications that are effective and cost-effective,” said Dr. John Haley, a pathologist at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, who is working on a collaborative project to turn a shelved diabetes drug into a new treatment for colon cancer.

“This drug never had a name. It’s an abandoned drug,” Haley said of the medication that was developed years ago by pharmaceutical giant Roche. The company turned away from the drug when it didn’t seem to work efficiently against type 2 diabetes.

But Haley said those corporate misgivings were not a concern to him and his colleagues. Even though Roche gave up on the drug, Stony Brook scientists are studying the medication’s chemical structure because they see how it can be transformed into a potent anti-cancer drug. Haley and his colleagues have had encouraging laboratory results even as they foresee years of work ahead.

“We are changing the drug slightly,” Haley said of tweaking the medication’s chemical backbone, honing it to have more precision against cancer cells.

Haley emphasized that not all repurposing   emerges from carefully designed studies such as his. Some repurposed medications come from “happy accidents.”

“Sometimes people are looking for one thing and stumble upon something else — serendipity,” Haley said. “If you think about all of the variables and all of the different drugs and chemical compounds that are out there — Pfizer alone has about 2 million compounds — being lucky turns out to be very important.”