In a possible setback for scientists attempting to make drugs out of a substance found in red wine, GlaxoSmithKline PLC said a clinical trial of one drug in cancer patients has been halted due to safety concerns.

Glaxo acquired the drug in 2008 when it paid $720 million for Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company in Cambridge, Mass. The drug, known as SRT501, contains a reformulated version of resveratrol, a substance found in low quantities in red wine. Glaxo and Sirtris have been testing the drug and others in several diseases, including diabetes and cancer, in the belief that they may provide health benefits by activating enzymes in the body called sirtuins.

Resveratrol Clinical Trial Halted because of safety concerns

Geron, a biotechnology company located in Menlo Park California, is inventing molecules designed to both activate and inhibit an enzyme called telomerase (see side bar). Targeted inhibition, they predict, will provide broadly applicable and highly specific cancer treatments. Activation, they hope, will prevent and perhaps even correct some of the cellular deterioration that accompany aging, injury and chronic infectious and degenerative diseases. All this is well and good and, in fact, the people at Geron already have an orally available telomerase activator, TAT2, in clinical testing for AIDS. The company is betting that this molecule will do in patients what it did in the laboratory —prevent viral progression by enhancing the ability of CD8 lymphocytes to replicate and destroy HIV-1-infected CD4 cells. But this work is being done by well-qualified researchers working under FDA guidelines.

They pass themselves off as an independent review site, but the truth is that this is just a portal to steer you to the sites that sell you this crap.

Resveratrol SCAM

Resveratrol (3,5,4 trans-hydroxy stilbene) was discovered about 70 years ago. It's hardly new. You see everyone selling resveratrol, so it must be good stuff, right? If so many people are buying it, then it must work, right?

Cancer Research UK is more forthright in condemning those who hype resveratrol for its cancer- inhibiting properties. "Many vitamin and mineral supplements were believed to be potent cancer fighters until trials and large studies showed they are usually ineffective and can even increase the risk of cancer in some cases," says the charity's Yinka Ebo. "Resveratrol has a few anticancer properties when tested in animals or cells grown in a lab. But, to date, there is no strong evidence that resveratrol supplements can prevent cancer in people."

Read the whole story at Wired