Trial Of New Drug On Sheep At Lincoln

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30559, 30 September 1964, Page 20

Trial Of New Drug On Sheep At Lincoln

Experimental work with; sheep at Lincoln may help to make available to human patients in New Zealand a synthetic substitute for corticotrophin (often known as A.C.T.H.). A.C.T.H. is the hormone of the anterior pituitary gland, which stimulates; the adrenal cortex to produce steroids—cortisol and corti-> costerone, with trace amounts ; of sex hormones and similar substances. A.C.T.H. varies slightly ac- ■ cording to the species of mammal from which it comes. The new synthetic material i consists of that part of the lA.C.T.H. molecule which is common to all known types of ■ A.C.T.JL, and which is rei sponsible for the biological activity of A.C.T.H. At present, A.C.T.H. used in the treatment of human patients comes from animals, principally from pigs. The pro- 1 cess is expensive and the product cannot be fully standardised. If the trials indicate that 1 the synthetic material is a I satisfactory substitute for A.C.T.IL, this will be the first! time a polypeptide has been synthesised and made generally available. Polypeptides • are the basic proteins made: by living cells for the main-; tenance of vital bodily pro-! cesses.

The work is being carried out by Dr. D. W. Beaven. director of the Medical Unit of the Princess Margaret Hospital, in collaboration with Dr. D. S. Hart and Miss A. Helps, of the Johnson Memorial Laboratory of Lincoln College and Mr E. G. Perry, a Christchurch surgeon. The substance under test was developed by the C.1.8.A. laboratories of Geneva. Tests being carried out elsewhere on rat tissues in vitro (isolated from the body) have given favourable indications for the new material. The work going on at Lincoln—where, by a simple operation, adrenal glands of sheep have been made readily accessible to experimenters—attracted the company’s attention, and Dr. Beaven and his associates were invited to participate in the C.1.8.A. proi gramme. The material is injected into the artery supplying the sheep’s adrenal and measurements made of the amounts of cortisol and corticosterone appearing in the blood stream immediately on the other side of the gland.