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WHAT IS UKRAN THERAPY?
Ukrain is a special extract from greater celandine using for the treatment of cancer.
Ukrain is the first and only anticancer drug accumulating during minutes after administration in cancer cells. Because it triggers apoptosis in cancer cells this drug is only toxic against cancer cells while, in contrast to chemotherapy, at therapeutic dose it leaves healthy cells undamaged.
In 2004 and 2006 Dr. Wassil Nowicky, author of drug was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
BACKGROUND
Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus L.) is well known in herbal medicine since more than 3,000 years. The anti-tumour properties of the plant extract were described in a medicinal herb book published in 1536. The latex of greater celandine has been used mostly to treat skin warts.
However, internal use of celandine is strongly limited due its high toxicity. By means of a patent processing method a product was developed which can be administered intravenously and has affinity to cancer cells. The inventor named this product Ukrain after his country of birth.
REGULATORY STATUS
This drug has been approved as standard anticancer medication in United Arab Emirates (registration no. 4987-6179-1), some countries of Europe (for example, Ukraine: first approval on October 18, 1998, #3641, re-approval on September 2, 2003, #3641), Mexico (No. 036M2005 SSA).
Ukrain has also been designated as an Orphan Drug for pancreatic cancer in the USA (Designation Request #03-1693) and also in Australia (File 004/009839).
Ukrain has been presented 264 times at international scientific congresses and symposia as for example International Congresses of Chemotherapy, Annual Meetings of the American Association for Cancer Research, NCI – EORTC Symposium on New Drugs in Cancer Therapy and many others. 1997, at the 20th International Congress on Chemotherapy in Sydney, Australia, a whole sectional meeting was devoted to UKRAIN. Ukrain has been subject of 257 research publications.
PROPERTIES AND MACHANISM OF ACTION
Ukrain is the first and only anticancer drug accumulating during minutes after administration in cancer cells. Because it triggers apoptosis in cancer cells this drug is only toxic against cancer cells while, in contrast to chemotherapy, at therapeutic dose it leaves healthy cells undamaged.
Through its antiangiogenic properties this medicine encapsulates tumours, thereby making them accessible to surgery.
Ukrain has a unique mechanism of action that is definitively different from other medicinal products. In short, Ukrain induces apoptosis of cancer cells by inhibition of the polymerisation of tubulin; this results in a stop of cell growth in the G2M-phase. This mechanism is clearly different from that of gemcitabine (an analogon of pyrimidine; instead of cytidine, gemcitabine-triphosphate is build into the DNA-helix and DNA-synthesis stops) as well as of erlotinib (which is a selective inhibitor of tyrosine-kinase; cell growth is stopped by blocking the transmission of growth signals via the human epidermal growth factor receptor). Ukrain has therefore an innovative mechanism of action, different of the action of these two medicinal products.
In addition, this preparation has an immune-modulating effect, whereby it improves the general condition of patients and does not only prolong their lives but in many cases also affects a recovery.
Due to its therapeutic index (ratio of therapeutic dose to the toxic one) of 1250 – on contrary to common cytostatics with TI of 1.4-1.8, the dose range which has been toxic to cancer cells had no noxious effects on the patient’s body. Probably this is the reason why Ukrain does not provoke necroses when being administered intramuscularly as well. This unique capacity has been proven in many studies by researchers from various countries with, in total, 16 malignant and 9 normal cell lines:
• Hohenwarter et al, 1992: human osteosarcoma and melanoma cell lines; human endothelial cells from umbilical vein.
• Cordes et al, 2002: human tumor cell lines MDA-MB-231 (breast), PA-TU-8902 (pancreas), CCL-221 (colorectal), U-138MG (glioblastoma); human skin and lung fibroblastic cells HSF1, HSF2 and CCD32-LU.
• Roublevskaia et al, 2000 (Anticancer Research): ME180 and A431 carcinoma cell lines; HaCaT normal human keratinocytes.
• Gagliano et al, 2007: glioblastoma MI cell lines T60, T63 and glioblastoma.
• Habermehl et al, 2006: Jurkat A3 T-lymphoma, caspase-9 DN expressing Jurkat, caspase-8 and FADD negative Jurkat, CD95/TRAIL-resistant Jurkat A3, and Bcl-2 overexpressing Jurkat cells; Jurkat J16 control cells, cFLIP-L expressing Jurkat cells.
• Panzer et al, 1998: HeLa human cervical carcinomaand Hs27 (human foreskin fibroblasts), WHCO5 (squamous oesophageal cancer); Graham 293 (transformed human embryonic kidney) and Vero (transformed African green monkey kidney).
229 scientists from 22 countries at 58 research institutions and state universities worked extensively on the effects of Ukrain. This agent has been revealed to inhibit tubulin polymerisation (Panzer 1998, Ramadani 2000), to cause the cell cycle arrest of cancer cells in G2/M phase with cyclin CDK1 and CDK2 upregulation (Roublevskaia et al, 2000) with selective apoptosis induction in cancer cells (Lanvers-Kaminsky et al, 2006) through mitochondrial caspases activation (Habermehl et al, 2006) in intrinsic cell death pathway (Mendoza et al, 2006). Ukrain caused also downregulation of metalloproteinases expression (Gagliano et al, 2006).
Many preclinical studies have proven the efficacy of Ukrain against various human cancer cell lines, including cisplatin-resistant cell lines. One of the most important of these studies - the research at the National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, Maryland, USA) where Ukrain was tested on the screening panel with 60 cell lines from eight human cancer types and revealed to be malignotoxic (toxic for cancer cells) against all the solid cancer cell lines tested.
As the common anticancer drugs are toxic both against cancer and normal cells they are named cytostatics – Ukrain, on the contrary, is toxic only against cancer cells and therefore is named malignocytolytic drug.
These preclinical results were then confirmed in randomised and controlled clinical studies as well as in many clinical observations on various malignant tumours like pancreas, colorectal cancer, prostate, lung, breast, ovarian, stomach cancer, melanoma and others.
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