That’s gold, Jerry! Gold! And why wouldn’t it be? You’ve got to love that yellow metal, whether you see it in Aladdin or Die Hard 3 or The Italian Job. You might dream of owning some or burying it in unspecified places, like Parks and Recreation’s Ronald Swanson or you may be influenced to get some after hearing Robert Kiyosaki talk on podcasts. But, is gold really being used to its fullest capabilities and potential? Are you?
What if gold had a really instrumental role to play in dealing with cancer? Who’d have thought?
Something, like chemotherapy, might attack cancer cells, but, could, also damage normal tissues and make Walter White bald. Sure, he shaved it off, but that was only after he noticed hair loss after the cancer treatment. Plus, chemo causes other issues, like nausea, fatigue, shortness of breath, kidney damage and more.
Wouldn’t cancer patients prefer gold in their treatments, instead? That one pitcher on an early season of Shark Tank US who promised gold as a byproduct of his electric generator could donate some, as part of a CSR initiative. Because it seems like there may be a way for gold to have a new feather in its cap.
In late 2024, a study by researchers stemming from a partnership between Australia and India found that there’s a potential gold-based drug that could help treat cancer. What do the tests say? The drug is said to have slowed down tumour growth in animals by close to 85%. That’s a whole lot of remission! Chemotherapy and King Kong ain’t got nothing on this!
This is said to be due to a gold compound that’s 27x more potent against cervical cancer cells in mice than a drug that’s deemed to be one of the most commonly used chemo drugs called Cisplatin. Plus, the gold compound is said to be 3.5x more effective against prostate cancer.
What’s going on? Gold’s said to be stable and resistant to corrosion, so that might have helped. Plus, your chemistry textbooks might have mentioned gold is biologically inert, which means it’s not something that readily reacts to one’s biological processes. Though, gold might hurt more if Jason Momoa melts it and pours it over your head.
Somehow, they figured out a way for the drug to interact with an enzyme abundant in cancer cells, shutting those cells down before they multiply or become immune to drugs. And at the same time, this is said to be able to minimize toxicity to healthy cells. In theory, that’s a major leap! Of course, human trials haven’t happened yet, so it’ll be a while before nurses at hospitals are lugging gold bars in a cart to Patient Room #69.
Though, if it gets to that point of human success, gold could go beyond being just a symbol of wealth and vanity to become a source of healing. That usually takes a lot of PR to change one’s image like that.
That might be a bit more interesting for India, which is said to account for around 20% of the global supply of generic medicines with over 40% of its generic drug production being exported. Would Indian BioTech startups and pharmaceutical behemoths start looking to invest in “gold-based oncology”? Who’d have thought gold-based oncology would ever be a thing? That might make Dr James Wilson beam a bit more.
These Indian companies may want to go ahead with this, considering India, itself, had about 1.4 million cancer cases in 2022. Would there be enough incentivization to improve patient outcomes this way? It might help with India’s pharma reputation, keeping in mind that unfortunate passing of close to 70 children in Gambia after they were said to have consumed Indian-made cough syrup.
And even if Mark Cuban’s Cost Plug Drugs tries, the prices of drugs in India are said to still be cheaper than in Western countries. So, if an Indian BioTech startup or a big Pharma company is able to develop this at scale, the gold-based drugs could be manufactured at a fraction of Western prices. Would the developing world, including Gambia, give India a second chance to grow up once again and be its drug supplier?
Would it be overly capitalistic to consider that if India is able to get things done in this area, it could create a bit of a medical tourism boost to the country by attracting foreign patients here for cancer treatments? Think people going to Turkey for hair transplants, but a cancerous version of that.
Interestingly, the global oncology cancer drug market is said to hit close to $290 billion by 2030 with a CAGR of roughly 8.5% between 2022 and 2030. So, which Indian pharma venture might play their hand to figure out whether they’d accelerate clinical trials and check out regulatory approvals?
There’s something called nanomedicine, where tiny particles are used to treat diseases or deliver medicine. Nano’s that thing that Anthony Stark used for his Iron Man suits when the MCU decided to get a bit more CGI-reliant. It’s said that India has made significant strides in nanotech, but maybe that’s self-aggrandizing if it’s Indian folks proclaiming that, but, maybe, gold nanoparticles could be a new frontier. Does this perk the ears of materials science folks in India?
Of course, all of this is years away from development. It’s said that 90% of clinical drug trials fail, with oncology having the highest attrition rate for the USA’s FDA approval. Would something, like this, die in R&D purgatory?
Just because it worked for some mouse may not mean it will for humans. Will the ponyboy stay golden for this to succeed? And are we sure that gold particles in the body wouldn’t have some build-up and cause some issues? No risk of neurotoxicity?
India was said to have imported more than ₹3.7 trillion rupees worth of gold in FY2024. Would a lot of sudden demand for gold skyrocket prices? Could that cripple the affordability of gold, thereby increasing the price of the drug, leading to the end-consumer needing to be real wealthy to be treated this way? This is not a regular generic drug that could be mass-produced cheaply, right?
Though, it would have been really nice if gold were a scalable raw material. Could the economics be made to work? How does India’s pharma realm do, when it comes to novel drug development, as opposed to generics? And if Cisplatin is the chemo standard & it’s cheap, profitable and widely used, would India’s Big Pharma really be that altruistic and disrupt their own cash cow?
And it’s said that even though India has significant gold reserves, its domestic production is really really low. Is the country cool with that kind of import dependence?
Is the gold rush for gold for pharma about to begin? Or is this a case of “nothing gold can stay”?
