Cancer Cured?

[Nelix]

Recently found this on Twitter: http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice

If this is true; Cancer has been cured, using a rather simple, and non-expensive means. Just thought you'd be interested to know, while it hasn't circulated widely, it'll be interesting to see if anyone can counter there research. There's a link to the orignal research in the article as well.

[Inumo]

I don't know much about what contains the kill switch in cells, but if this is true, then it seems like it should work. Of course, they've got their terms a bit mixed up as it's not glycolysis alone, but lactic acid fermentation, which continues on from glycolysis to produce a bit more ATP. Of course, if this is true, it means muscle cells should be the most likely to get cancerous, as when you overwork them, they also do lactic acid fermentation. That's why your muscles get sore: they produce lactic acid. Still, if this can stop tumors from expanding, or even eliminate them, then more power to those scientists.

[Tezkat]

DCA made the rounds in mass media after the U Alberta study was published a few years ago, being hailed as a cancer-killing miracle drug. Since then, they've demonstrated its effectiveness in some early clinical trials, but last I heard they were still trying to raise the millions of dollars needed for further human testing. Basically, developing this as a drug wouldn't be profitable for anyone allowed to fund such trials, since you can already purchase it by the ton from large chemical manufacturers. (Treatment with pharmaceutical grade DCA costs on the order of a dollar a day.) Future development of DCA as a cancer treatment will have to rely on philanthropists with deep pockets or significant changes in government policies.

Until then, we've got a handful of doctors and "alternative" medicine practitioners dispensing the stuff, to say nothing of all the patients who just buy the stuff online and self-medicate after hearing about it. Which is dangerous. Among other things, industrial grade DCA is usually refined with solvents that are toxic when imbibed by humans. And even pharmaceutical grade DCA can be neurotoxic at therapeutic doses. We just don't know a whole lot about its safety or interactions with other drugs yet.

[ShadesFox]

This sort of rumor starts up every couple months.  Though ones with this sort of graphics and almost believable horse shit only shows up once in a few years.  Usually it is someone looking to collect money to do 'research'.  With research being defined as hookers and blow on some island.  You can pick up on it being fictional because of the constant claim that big pharma isn't interested because "it can't be patented".

A dirty little 'secret' of pharmaceutical industry is that it's base is almost entirely taking the 'unpatentable' and turning it into something patented.  Usually involving the manufacturing process or adding other bits to it.  Of course, this is only the case when the 'wonder drug' isn't complete fiction.  More often then not this sort of thing is just purely the invention of the scam artist with visions of hookers and blow.

Even in the cases where there is a real 'wonder drug', usually it has it's great effects in a cell culture.  That is, cancer cells in complete isolation from everything else.  When moved to animal trials usually the whole 'rest of the body' part gets in the way.  Some these drugs do make it to market.  There really is a huge grab bag of ways to get a patent on drugs so being 'unpatentable' never keep anyone from getting one anyways.  It is just that the "WONDER DRUG THAT MELTS CANCER!" ends up just being another round of chemo.

[VAE]

Heh.
In laboratory conditions, concentrated sodium hydroxide has been proven effective at arresting growth of cancerous cells as well.

[Tezkat]

Studies demonstrating DCA's anti-cancer properties in humans have been published in some pretty respectable medical journals. Except for a handful of small clinical trials, however, most of it has been case evidence. And reports of toxic side effects in self-medication and off-label use.

Being unable to get big pharma interested in funding their study, the U Alberta team actually turned to soliciting donations online for a small Phase II clinical trial. They raised nearly a million dollars in a matter of months and completed those trials last year. (The results were published in Science.) Subsequent phases will be significantly more expensive. The cost of bringing a commercial cancer treatment to market from this stage as could easily run into the hundreds of millions.

Most of the silliness regarding patents in the pharmaceutical industry revolves around big pharma attempting to extend protection for existing properties. Once the genie is out of the bottle, as it were, it's usually not worth the effort... and frequently impossible to gain the degree of exclusivity needed to recoup an investment of that magnitude. You can already buy this stuff by the metric ton from chemical companies in China and India. The math just doesn't add up.

I'm sure they are, however, investigating variations for compounds that they would be able to patent. Some might even turn out to be less toxic than simple sodium dichloroacetate. Even so, such treatments would probably still be a good decade away from commercialization and several orders of magnitude more expensive.

[Sofox]

Heard about these guys a while back. I was researching possible cures for my aunt, and out of all the various "cancer cures" I researched, this one seemed the most solid one. I even donated to them.
I wish them the best, though as Tezkat says, getting the trials needed to will require a lot of money.

[Cogidubnus]

I can honestly say that I have absolutely legitimate or not. If it is true, I wish it'd come around a bit sooner.

But even though I can't speak to the science, it smells like rumor. I can say that when Mom got diagnosed, I didn't go searching through every possible online database for a cure, because if there was one, and you could get it, they'd use it. There's always better care, or course, but it seemed like everything I did read, and everything Dad showed me after searching tirelessly for anything to give him hope, was just anecdotal evidence at best. Usually it was just something that sounded nice and official with a real doctor's signature and a conspiratorial tone to pander to the desperate.

At some point, Cancer will be cured, and I some point the cure will be in development like this is, so you can't rule it out as being legitimate just out of hand. If Tezkat is right than those folks up in Canada seem to think it works and aren't necessarily trying swindle people, which is probably good.

I've run my mouth off. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I would like it if this was real, but it sounds fishy.

[Tezkat]

I think calling it a "cure" for cancer as if it were some kind of magic bullet that makes all cancers disappear is certainly premature and possibly unfair. What this drug represents is an alternate chemotherapy treatment that is potentially cheaper and better at targeting the cancerous cells over normal tissues (and thus less side effects). Not that that isn't already a very good thing.

In anecdotal reports of terminal patients with metastatic cancers, both self-medicaters and patients of off-label DCA proponents like the Medicor Cancer Centres in Toronto, the drug gave them back their lives. Weeks or months of life expectancy turned into years. But the cancer eventually does develop a resistance to the drug, just as with traditional chemo.

On the flip side, there have been reports, even some published in the literature, of self-medicaters turning up in the ER unable to walk or speak properly because of toxic DCA buildup in their CNS tissues. Being "less" toxic than established chemotherapies is a matter of degree, after all, and potential drug interactions are poorly understood at this time.


And the saddest thing is... now that there's a potentially promising cancer treatment with virtually no regulatory support, scammers abound waiting to prey on the hopes and dreams of people living with--and dying from--cancer. When the story broke in 2007 and the research group began soliciting donations for their upcoming clinical trial, an unrelated student at the university set up scam websites to steal their funding and sell fake medication. His efforts finally landed him in prison, but there are plenty of other companies (mostly based in Mexico) that keep cropping up to sell fake DCA online. Also keep in mind that DCA slated for human consumption is processed differently from the stuff destined for pesticide use and the like, so even "real" DCA might not be safe for use. Caveat emptor...

[Alondro]

As a research biologist in the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, I can say with absolute certainty that this is going to be mainly hype.

Dichloroacetate was thought to work by restoring oxidative phosphorylation in the cancer cells, thus allowing them to activate the normal apoptotic pathways in the mitochondria.  However, in a 2010 trial in mice, DCA actually decreased apoptosis in some tumors, making them more resistant to treatments.

Like many other treatments, it may end up working for certain cancers, but be useless to harmful for others.

I suspect it may also cause myopathy if one used it and did a fair amount of exercise along with its use.  If it's inhibiting the glycolytic cycle, then myocytes operating anaerobically during exercise would be deprived of energy and die.  Also, in a trial testing it for lactic acidosis treatment (specifically MELAS), the study was halted when all patients experienced neurotoxicity.

People wrongly think of cancer as one disease.  Cancer is actually hundreds of diseases, all characterized by uncontrolled cellular proliferation and de-differentiation.  They do not all share the same genetic etiology, some are even caused by viral infections (HPV and Epstein-Barr virus, for instance).

Essentially, there will NEVER be a single sure for cancer, in the same way there will never be vaccine for the 'common cold' (which is caused by thousands of strains of dozens of different viruses).  It's a case of too many root causes lumped into a general term which the public doesn't understand.

Like Shades said, this looks like it's just going be another drug to add to the chemotherapy regimines for a few cancer types.

[VAE]

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/dichloroacetate_and_cancer.php

I think this Pharyngula post clarifies it for us common folk, and is written by someone who has (and should have)  an idea.

[Tezkat]

It's strange to me that opinions on this tend to cluster at the extremes, as if "zomg magical cancer cure" and "worthless hype" are the only two options.


It's not like research on DCA as a cancer therapy in live humans is completely nonexistent. There are ongoing small clinical trials in both the USA and Canada, and the results of one Phase II trial have already been published. I linked to that article above, but for those of you with out academic journal access, the results were as follows: aside from some in vitro stuff they did studying GBM (brain cancer) tumours, they followed five real (5) GBM human patients treated with DCA. One died anyway, two responded favourably, and two showed no significant improvement due to DCA.


The Medicor Cancer Centres in Toronto have been investigating DCA as an off-label cancer treatment since 2007. Although their publications in peer-reviewed journals are limited to case reports, they have made available some of the aggregate data on the hundreds of cancer patients they've treated with DCA over the years.

Their results are actually somewhat comparable to the significantly smaller sample represented in the published Phase II trial.

The overall percentage of cancer patients who respond favourably to DCA (tumour shrinkage, pain reduction, etc.) is in the neighbourhood of 40%.

Of the patients able to continue DCA therapy at least a month (many die anyway, discontinue therapy due side effects, drop out of treatment for other reasons, etc.), around 60% show positive responses.

Side effects, when present at all, are considerably less pronounced than traditional chemotherapies (although the neurotoxicity risks are quite real).

Prognosis improves significantly when combined with other therapies (chemo, radiation, etc.) compared to DCA alone.

This drug is in no way a magic anti-cancer bullet.

It is, however, absolutely something that should be investigated further, and the fact developing it as a commercial cancer therapy wouldn't be profitable highlights a gaping hole in capitalist biomedicine's ability to serve the public good. Outrage that the admittedly sensationalist journalistic coverage has been generating isn't all that unjustified.


Sorry if I'm a bit animated on this topic. My aunt suffered from cancer and passed away last week, so this kind of stuff is fresh on my mind of late...

[Alondro]

It's just not as exciting as the media was portraying it and blogs were hyping it.

I've personally witnessed a drug regimine that was far more hype-worthy, but didn't get much attention at the time it was introduced.

My brother, who had leukemia, was a beneficiary of this regimine, which included a new drug at the time called 'vincristine', a nasty sort of substance that requires a central line into the aorta because it will practically melt smaller blood vessels.

However, in it's drug regimine for my brother's type of leukemia, it increased the cure rate from less that 10% to over 90%.

It was the 'magic bullet' for that particular type of cancer.  But that was before the Internet and computer ownership really started to grow, wayyyy back early 90's, so there wasn't much press except in medical journals.

Anyway, that regimine is more the norm, a particular treatment that works very well for certain types of cancer. 

This DCA seems the type that might work very well for some solid tumors, as they become hypoxic due to their density and lack of blood flow, thus relying on anaerobic metabolism to survive.  However, it would probably be completely useless in cancers that still retain oxidative phosphorylation and simply bypass apoptosis by otherwise appearing as normal (though immature-looking) cells, such as some filamentous and most liquid cancers, such as schwannomas, myelomas, lymphomas, leukemias, and highly metastatic cancers which have mutated to such an extent that apoptosis is no longer able to activate in any circumstances.