However, thalidomide is a teratogenic substance, and a proportion of children born during the 1960s had thalidomide embryopathy (TE). Of these babies born with TE, "about 40% of them died before their first birthday". The surviving individuals are now middle-aged and they report experiencing challenges (physical, psychological, and socioeconomic) related to TE. Individuals born with TE frequently experience a wide variety of health problems secondary to their TE. These health conditions include both physical and psychological conditions. When compared to individuals of similar demographic profiles, those born with TE report less satisfaction with their quality of life and their overall health. Access to health care services can also be a challenge for these people, and women in particular have experienced difficulty in locating healthcare professionals who can understand and embrace their needs. Brand names
Brand names include Contergan, Thalomid, Talidex, Talizer, Neurosedyn, Distaval and many others. Research
Research efforts have been focused on determining how thalidomide causes birth defects and its other activities in the human body, efforts to develop safer analogs, and efforts to find further uses for thalidomide. Thalidomide analogs
The exploration of the antiangiogenic and immunomodulatory activities of thalidomide has led to the study and creation of thalidomide analogs. Celgene has sponsored numerous clinical trials with analogues to thalidomide, such as lenalidomide, that are substantially more powerful and have fewer side effects — except for greater myelosuppression. In 2005, Celgene received FDA approval for lenalidomide (Revlimid) as the first commercially useful derivative.
Cancer treatment
Shortly after the teratogenic properties of thalidomide were recognized in the mid-1960s, its anti-cancer potential was explored and two clinical trials were conducted in people with advanced cancer, including some people with multiple myeloma; the trials were inconclusive.Little further work was done with thalidomide in cancer until the 1990s.Judah Folkman pioneered studies into the role of angiogenesis (the proliferation and growth of blood vessels) in the development of cancer, and in the early 1970s had shown that solid tumors could not expand without it. In 1993 he surprised the scientific world by hypothesizing the same was true of blood cancers, and the next year he published work showing that a biomarker of angiogenesis was higher in all people with cancer, but especially high in people with blood cancers, and other evidence emerged as well. Meanwhile, a member of his lab, Robert DAmato, who was looking for angiogenesis inhibitors, discovered in 1994 that thalidomide inhibited angiogenesis and was effective in suppressing tumor growth in rabbits. Around that time, the wife of a man who was dying of multiple myeloma and whom standard treatments had failed, called Folkman asking him about his anti-angiogenesis ideas. Folkman persuaded the patients doctor to try thalidomide, and that doctor conducted a clinical trial of thalidomide for people with multiple myeloma in which about a third of the subjects responded to the treatment.