donny - 4-11-2004 at 07:46
I am desperate to find a laboratory capable of identifying IGF-1 content in a sample of what has been represented to be Myotrophin - or is it a
placebo?. I have ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and need the information to make decisions regarding my future health care. ALS patients have a 1-3
year life expectancy so there is great urgency.
chemoleo - 4-11-2004 at 10:13
I am sorry to hear about your troubles, I wouldn't want to wish that to anyone 
.
I should say that myotrophin is derived from the natural nervous system, and also known as insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a neurotrophic
(nerve-nourishing) factor that's shown promise in laboratory studies. Unfortunately it is undecided whehter it works, or if it is safe (which is
understandably not as much an issue for you).
IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) is a 70-residue protein hormone which has both metabolic and mitogenic activities mediated through IGF-1 binding
to cell surface receptors. So in other words it is a PROTEIN! That makes it quite easy to identify, if the placebo is not made of a protein of
identical size, too.
However, placebos normally contain sugar, flour and such things, aiming to make it look/taste/smell as much as possible as the real drug. Thus it is
hard to say what exactly the placebo consists of.
Anyway, I understand your quest. Presumably you are taking part in a clinical trial, where you are given either the real drug or a placebo - and you
are wondering whehter you are wasting your time or not. Do correct me if I am wrong on this.
So basically you want to find a place that analyses one of your pills, so that you'd find out whehter you got the real stuff. Well, if you do
find it is the real stuff, then do tell the trial people that you KNEW it is mytrophin, and not sugar - so that they don't include you in the
sampling. It wouldn't be fair to screw up their trials with patients who knew what they had.
That's the only thing I ask of you before you go on.
As I said, proteins are quite easy to analyse.
In principle you could analyse it yourself, if you have access to a few chemicals, and if you know this or that.
A proper lab would run an SDS gel, takes 45 minutes, and then stain it with Coomassie blue (i am sure you can get a small sample from somewhere), and
destain it. He would then discover a band on the gel, at around 7 kilo Daltons, which would correspond to the molecular weight of myotrophin. Takes
one hour altogether, total expense probably 20 pounds or so (reagent wise). I'd suggest you find yourself a biochemistry friend, it would be
seriously trivial for him to do. Alternatively, leave a box with your pill in a specific location in England, and i will pick it up 
Alternatively - there are other ways to purify a protein, chemically.
You could dissolve the pill in a few ml of pH7 buffer (i.e. 50mM phosphate, 100 mM salt), then remove any insoluble particles. To this you would have
to add trichloroacetic acid, which causes proteins to precipitate - while sugars and such (which would be present in solution in case of a placebo)
would remain in solution, i.e. TCA wouldn't precipiate it.
There are various other techniques for detecting protein. If you are interested in doing it yourself, let me know.
Good Luck.
I am a fish - 4-11-2004 at 12:45
I would just like to second Chemoleo's point that if you do this, you MUST eventually let them know what you've done. Placebo trials are
done for a very good reason, and if you discover what you're getting, you could damage the research. If you don't, you could potentially
condemn others with ALS to further suffering.
Blind Angel - 4-11-2004 at 15:11
I would be very interested in this research. Since it seem that some variant of ALS are sort of heriditary, and I got it in my family. Do they have
any website/paper on this medication?