If New Diabetes Drug Fails in Stopping Sepsis, It will Do Well in Colorectal Cancer

Texas researchers decide to use and test a compound from the family of aldose reductase inhibitors on animals that were injected with chemicals to induce a condition of severe sepsis, including severe inflammation and loss of heart function.

Sepsis is a deadly inflammation of the tissue caused by the overreaction of the immune system to a bacterial infection. Bacteria could be killed but the levels of the toxins stay high and lead to septic shock. When used on animals, the aldose reductase inhibitor managed to reduce the inflammation, restore heart functioning and prevent septic shock.

Aldose reductase is an enzyme that takes part in the process in which glucose is converted to fructose and an alcohol called sorbitol. One of the aldose reductase inhibitors called Fiderestat has already been approved for use in Japan and may be approved in USA soon.

Texas researchers injected aldose reductase inhibitor called sorbinil into animals and got amazing results. They are now planning for human trails.
The problem is that it is not uncommon for a drug to prove effective in animal trails and in laboratory and then fail in humans’. The drug is promising because it seems to stop production of all the toxins causing physical damage.

However, if it fails to prevent sepsis it will do well in reducing the inflammatory processes in colorectal cancer, which has already been proven.