Howard+Skipper

Howard Skipper


 * The story:**

Howard Skipper found out the two drugs: Cytosine and Arabinoside 6-thioguanine, both antimetabolics, worked well in adults with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia after we first modeled them is animals. Howard's research employed the mammalian cancer cell line named L-2010 (the same one used in the first Ara C mammalian studies). This cell line can be injected into mice, resulting in the mice developing Leukemia. Howard studied the growth of the Leukemia cells in mice and the effect that various combinations of drugs had on the growth of these cells. one of these drugs that he studied was Ara C.

Howard made it possible for doctors to begin clinical trails with a pretty good idea of how much to give people without killing them. the relationship is not a simple weight or relationship between body size and drug dose, instead, it is a correlation with units of body surface area. In 1982, Howard was awarded the prestigious Charles F. Kettering prize for the conceptual and experimental contributions that led to cures of Acute Leukemia and solid tumor malignancies.

And there was it! our tale of from sea to Ara C, a successful Chemotherapy agent went for killing cancer cells in children with ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) In the 1960s, numerous research groups studying various aspects and effects of Ara C in bacterial and mammalian systems. Howard ushered Ara C from the lab bench to treatment for children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. In 2005, Ara C is still included in the combination of 4-7 chemotherapy drugs employed in all of the current protocols for first remission ALL.

Science is: Helping people. If you try something, you are not always going to be right.
 * By: Darien Kansanback**