Word: fap
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...began the seventh and final year of the Radcliffe Science Alliance. Besieged by the three letter F-words FAP, FOP and FUP, the Science Alliance stood alone amongst first-year programs as an academically oriented experience. In particular, the Alliance offered 40 incoming female first-years the opportunity to become acquainted with the resources and support network available to women in the sciences at Harvard. Touring chemistry labs by day and stargazing by night, the participants received early exposure to a wide range of facilities and opportunities on campus and in the Boston area. Some of the workshops were geared...
...disease that struck Nichols as a teenager was familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), a genetic disorder characterized by a wild--and potentially lethal--growth of cancerous polyps on the inner lining of the intestine. The only recourse is to remove them surgically, along with the intestinal wall, and outfit the patient, at least temporarily, with a waste-collection bag strapped to the body. Nichols desperately wanted to protect his son from that grim experience...
...Europe, telling them that if they started making sulindac it would save thousands of lives. But it was about to come off patent, and as a generic drug it didn't offer much of a payoff because of the likelihood of competitive products and lower prices. Moreover, FAP--Nichols' cancer--is a so-called orphan disease, afflicting only 25,000 Americans, so there wasn't much of a market for it. Thanks, but no thanks, the drugmakers said...
...wanted to know how FGN-1 worked. Until then, colon cancer was thought to be a disease of uncontrolled growth. Nichols' scientists suspected instead that the problem was uncontrolled death. Cells lining the intestines usually live only 72 hours. But while cells are born at the usual rate in FAP patients, some fail to self-destruct, producing an excess. Johns Hopkins' Giardiello eventually showed that drugs like sulindac work by restoring the natural process of cell death in the colon. Precisely how it does that, however, remains unknown...
...Nichols' company finally began testing FGN-1 on humans. In a trial of 18 patients with FAP, 12 showed substantial improvement. One patient, who was developing about 100 polyps a year, had no polyps at all while on the drug. This led to another, larger double-blind study with one group taking a placebo, the other FGN-1. But midway it was discovered that the recruitment of patients had been mishandled and a year's worth of work was lost. Still, Nichols could see that in a core group of subjects the drug was working as he had hoped...