The three thousand year journey of colchicine | Hacker News Reader

The three thousand year journey of colchicine

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36 pointsquadrin8 comments

I opened the article expecting to read about its use in plant breeding: colchicine is renowned there for inducing polyploidy. Never knew it has a history in medicine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyploidy

Same here. I have a bottle in my freezer for that purpose.

Never heard of it, please tell me more about using it in plant breeding!

Humans have two copies of each chromosome. Plants in nature can have many more, and some can be induced to duplicate their chromosomes which sometimes gives them larger seeds and resilience to environmental conditions. Similar to hybrid crops but somehow containing the full genomes of both parents. Bread wheat is hexapoloid (containing sub-genomes from three varieties of wheat) and quinoa is tetraploid (containing two different species). There have been projects for ~100 years to make polyploid rice with heavier grain-weight, but they haven't been able to reproduce.

Super interesting, thanks!

After seeing multiple doctors in the USA (where I no longer live thankfully) for a chronic mouth ulcer problem an allergist prescribed me colchicine which seemed to cure them. These ulcers lasted over 15 years and colchicine seemed to be the only thing to eradicate them.

Insurance wouldn’t cover the cost and colchicine cost me $500 a month for a bottle. In the UK I can pay 10 pounds. Crazy drug and crazy price for something 3000 years old

Someone has to pay for the regulatory studies. Someone has to pay for purity. Someone has to pay for marketing, legal, and other corporate overhead.

My understanding is that for drugs with FDA approval, almost all that cost burden has historically been borne by customers in the USA.

Oh, and profit. Ditto

colchicine is a life safer for me with gouty went rough on of me! 3000 years of poison!! I'd have never imagine that.

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