-Caveat Lector- >From SMH
Now for the Barbie drug August 10 2002 You're embarrassingly pale. Your paunch is protruding. And last night it was glaringly obvious that your performance needed ... er ... considerable enhancement. You might buy a sunlamp, acquire a personal trainer and see a sex therapist. But what if, instead, you could just pop a pill or stick on a patch? A new drug being developed for commercial use in Australia and the United States might be just the thing. Melanotan - more alluringly dubbed the 'Barbie' drug - promises not only an all-over tan but a reawakening of sexual desire. But wait, there's more: in its raw form, Melanotan might also suppress appetite and tackle acne. "Part of what we do can be considered cosmetic," says Dr Wayne Millen, managing director of the Melbourne-based biotech firm EpiTan, which has the world rights to develop Melanotan as a tanning agent. But he says the drug's main aim is as "an extra bullet ... in the fight against skin cancer". Millen's product increases the concentration of melanin, the tanning component in the skin. The drug is basically a synthetic copy of a naturally occurring tanning agent - a hormone called Alpha-MSH, which the body produces after sunburn. Its appeal in a marketplace where tan is terrific - in the United States alone the tanning salon industry is worth some $US5 billion ($9.4 billion) a year - is that a tan can be acquired indoors without exposure to harmful UV rays at a solarium or from sunlight. Providing you can get the doctor to prescribe it, you can sport your tan before you board your flight to Bali. "[I'll] be able to strut my stuff on the beach [and] still have skin damage protection," claims Millen. Dr Rob Moodie, from Vic Health, is, however, a doubter. He asks: "Is it seriously protective or not? ... a lot of drug prescribing is also about fashion." Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the biotech firm Palatin is getting in touch with the sexual side of the drug. This aspect was stumbled on a few years ago during human trials of Melanotan's tanning potential at the University of Arizona. One of the male volunteers reported spontaneous erections. This quality in itself could be more far-reaching than Viagra as further tests suggest Melanotan II, as the spin-off is known, acts on the hypothalamus, the part of the brain which triggers arousal. Female lab rats high on Melanotan reportedly tripled their level of courtship behaviour. Viagra, in contrast, is more mechanical as it acts as a vascular stimulant, raising the blood flow to the vital organ. Millen believes that while the product being developed in New Jersey is intended for market as a sexual dysfunction drug, it still contains the tanning properties of the original Melanotan formula. This hybrid product could face enormous regulatory hurdles, he suggests, when it comes to getting the nod from the US Food and Drug Administration. (Not to mention a mid-winter tan being a dead giveaway of your sexual problems.) Millen does not foresee such problems for the tanning drug being developed in Melbourne. Can it arouse more than an all-over tan? "Our drug does not display that [sexual] function," he says. As a second round of clinical trials begins, Millen believes his version of Melanotan could be released on the Australian market by 2005. Millen's company - which floated on the Australian Stock Exchange last year - estimates the potential global market for the drug to be in excess of $1 billion a year. But he insists this is not just a cosmetic product: "There is a very solid, medical reason to develop this product ... We can provide a safeguard for one of the most insidious cancers of all. It just so happens that people like to be tanned." 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