Disease progress models growth

Another approach to modeling the course of disease progress is to use a growth function. The growth... 

Metastatic bone disease (MBD) is characterized by very high levels of bone turnover in regions proximal to the tumour [33]. Bone resorption inhibitors such as bisphosphonates represent the current standard of care for the treatment of bone metastases primarily due to breast or prostate cancer and multiple myeloma. It has been proposed that other strong anti-resorptives such as a Cat K inhibitor could be useful in the treatment of bone metastases. Evidence for this has been presented in the form of a preclinical MBD model in which human breast cancer cells are implanted into nude mice. Treatment with a Cat K inhibitor gave a significantly lower area of breast cancer-mediated osteolytic lesions in the tibia [34]. In a separate study, the efficacy of a Cat K inhibitor in the reduction in tumour-induced osteolysis was found to be enhanced in the presence of the bisphosphonate zolendronic acid [35,36]. When prostate cancer cells were injected into the tibia of SCID mice, treatment with a Cat K inhibitor both prevented and diminished the progression of cancer growth in bone [37]. 

It is expected that the application of imaging as a biomarker technique will continue to see growth in the future. For example, PET has been used to model the progression of Parkinson s disease. Ki is a rate constant that describes the rate of uptake of tracer into neurons. The tracer is preferentially taken up by active neurons in the brain therefore, Ki is used as a marker for the number of functioning neurons in the brain. Ki was found to be 0.0054/min in Parkinson s patients and 0.0101/min in healthy control subjects (13). MRI has been used to show a greater decrease in brain volume in Alzheimer s disease patients when compared to normal controls (14). 

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