The University of Alberta Discovery (possible cure for Big C)

DCA Research Information ^ | 15/3/2007

[Eleutheria5]

The article is dated. I haven't yet located Cancer Cell Magazine on the Web. Does anyone knowledgeable in the Oncology field know more?

On the political side, I note that finding a cure for the Big C is an industry, and a great many people would be upset for pecuniary reasons if the cure were not only easy and safe, but also cheap and unpatentable, as it well might be according to this article. The private sector has apparently balked on funding the necessary research, and the public sector has moved in instead, and is allegedly working at warp speed. I have philosophical problems with that, but facts are stubborn things, and can't be ignored. Anyone care to comment?

[New Jersey Realist]

My wife has survived Stage IV lung cancer for 2 years now. I doubt that this development will come in time.

[Vince Ferrer]

Drug companies fund research on things they develop and can patent, but they are not the only people in the private sector. There are many cancer charities that can fund research from donations, and “open source” the cure. So can churches, private foundations, and even wealthy individuals. Research can be crowd sourced by social networks. There are a million ways to fund something that cannot be patentable.

[Paladin2]

"The simple summary is this: that claim is a lie.

There have been no clinical trials of dichloroacetate (DCA) in cancer patients, so there is no basis for claiming they have a cure; some, but not all, cancers might respond in promising ways to the drug, while others are likely to be resistant (cancer is not one disease!); and there are potential neurotoxic side effects, especially when used in conjunction with other chemotherapies."

[hosepipe]

Interesting development.. Should be noised about..
A silver bullet would be nice for fighting this monster of a disease..

Might not work in every case but what does?..

On the otherhand- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s0UURBihH8

[Agamemnon]

Per "Dr. Len's" blog (2010) American Cancer Society

More On Dichloroacetate (DCA) In Cancer Treatment

"Simply stated, the science is intriguing and I believe is something to be pursued both in the lab and in the clinic. BUT, and this is a big but, it is not a cure for glioblastoma or any other cancer based on these results.

"My concern is that this paper is going to be transformed—like the last one—into something that it is not, namely that this is definitive evidence that DCA is the magic bullet for cancer treatment, particularly in glioblastoma (which is a cancer that has a very poor prognosis).

"This research still needs lots of work before we know whether it works or doesn’t work, and whether it is really safe or not when given to patients with cancer under a variety of circumstances."

FReegards!

[Eleutheria5]

But they said five years ago in the article that they are doing the research with help from the government. By now, I’d suppose they’ve either put up or shut up, but am not read up on current state of the claim. Nothing has been done?

[bgill]

...inexpensive...

No way will they let this happen. It would put too many out of business. Cancer makes too much money.

[Balding_Eagle]

Read this article carefully.

Save it.

It’s the last, and only, time you’ll hear of this cure.

[muawiyah]

A blog at American Cancer Society's website says there have been such tests.

There's a lot of paranoia out there about Big Pharma losing out on vast profits from their anti-cancer medications if this stuff works.

One thing you won't hear much about is how little profit there is in the business of curing cancer ~ on the other hand a lot of marginally useful medications are very costly.

What's going on with this particular drug is it works inside the cell ~ as does glipizide and glucophage (two common diabetic medications). Since this particular drug was first found to have an effect on a process that takes place in some cancers a whole new science of intracellular drugs has grown up. It's not just that some of them work inside the cell, they actually work inside the cell nucleus. So anything like this drug ~ that is known to work on processes in the mitochondria, is going to be studied extensively to determine everywhere it works and what it does.

There are shills on the net offering to sell folks large quantities of his material for oral ingestion. There are plenty of websites telling you all about thiamine sources so you can treat the neurological disorder brought about by OD'ing on this drug.

What a correct dose might be is unknown, and how it might interact with diabetic drugs or blood pressure medications has not been reported on authoritatively. Still, I'd probably buy a brick of it to try if i were diagnosed with any of the cancers for which some report some degree of change.

[muawiyah]

167,000 results on Google.com. It is being reported on. You just haven't been reading about it.

What I say, "toke up". It ain't gonna' kill you, unless, of course, it does ~ maybe it makes cancer grow eh!

[Eleutheria5]

OK. Have the results been published yet? If so, where? If not, when?

[muawiyah]

http://www.cancer.org/AboutUs/DrLensBlog/post/2010/05/14/More-On-Dichloroacetate-(DCA)-In-Cancer-Treatment.aspx from two years back. This is on the first board up on Google.com.

Just do a google search and start reading ~ huge amount of stuff on this particular compound ~ including one reported test on it's use in a brain cancer. Then, too, it's been used for a long time for metabolic disorders.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“whether it is really safe or not when given to patients with cancer under a variety of circumstances.””

So,,,, say you’re 75, and the doc says you have 6 months to live, which really means 2 or 3 months, why not give it to these people with no other hope?

[Jim Noble]

I was a resident in a major cancer center in the 1970s. Then, as now, the two most interesting things about chemotherapy are 1) That it works at all, and 2) That it doesn’t work better.

Shrinking tumors with new molecules is trivial. There have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of these “discoveries”. Articles like this give false hope to vulnerable people at a very bad time in their lives.

There is something, something we don’t get yet, about the cancer phenomenon. Something important is either turned on incorrectly or turned off incorrectly, so normal cell regulation stops working.

The chemo drugs address the effects of cancer (masses of poorly differentiated cells), but they obviously don’t deal with the (so far unknown) cause.

And yet - childhood ALL, some Hodgkins Disease, certain types of testicular cancer are, in fact, cured by chemotherapy. It remains very, very puzzling, with not a lot of progress in the fundamental realm over the past 40 years.

Oh, yeah - DCA? My best guess is it’s another “molecule of the month”.

[Eleutheria5]

Thank you. I knew there was a medical man here somewhere. But what of the possibility that mitochondrial dysfunction is the cause of cells going malignant, rather than the result, as it states in the article? Might that not be the thing that’s turned “off” for which, as you say, oncologists have been searching?

[BipolarBob]

So,,,, say you’re 75, and the doc says you have 6 months to live, which really means 2 or 3 months, why not give it to these people with no other hope?

Because a whole industries survival depends on NOT finding a cheap easy cure. The government is also involved with those big juicy tax dollars too. Also, if a company could make a super cancer that kills everyone unless you have the special anti-toxin, well that would make some politicians absolutely pee in their pants with glee. But maybe I'm a cynic.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“Because a whole industries survival depends on NOT finding a cheap easy cure.”

Of course!

[jameslalor]

Irresponsible reporting that is more likely to get people killed than it is to cure cancer.

I suppose it’s easier for people to believe in the communist myth of evil multinational robber barons engaged in a vast conspiracy to kill us all and charge us trillions of dollars while so doing than it is to believe that millions upon millions of private individuals, non-profit organizations, and for-profit corporations are furiously engaged in studying the hell out of the many and varied forms of cancer that afflict us in the hope of finding ANYTHING that may help extend the human lifespan and combat human suffering.

As for this most recent magic bullet, you’re only seeing the press coverage you are because the story appeals to a certain mythos.

Case in point, a 2010 study found that DCA actually PROTECTED human colorectal tumors. The chemical appeared to actually reduce apoptosis (programmed cell death, an essential mechanism for regulating cell growth and preventing cancer) which naturally caused the tumors being studied to grow FASTER. In the studies that have already been done on this chemical, we’ve seen one case where it actually caused cancer to grow faster. Top this off with the fact that the drug can cause extreme neurological damage and you’ve got a recipe for more harm, not less.

Further, do you know what the LD50 dose is? Do you know what the therapeutic dose is? Do you know what the possible drug interactions are? Without knowing any of those things you’d likely end up doing far more harm than good by randomly ingesting chemicals.

[Agamemnon]

So,,,, say you’re 75, and the doc says you have 6 months to live, which really means 2 or 3 months, why not give it to these people with no other hope?

There's nothing stopping you from buying DCA yourself right now. Mix up your own brew and take it, if you are persuaded that it will help. Why would a patient who is motivated to do so wait in doing so?

But, you say, I want my doctor to prescribe it to me.

OK then. On the flip side why would a doctor take the professional risk entirely to himself to prescribe something which has not been clinically established as safe and effective only to have a patient or patient's surviving family possibly take him to court for prescribing something that failed in practice, which was also not demonstrated to be clinically safe and effective in the first place?

Back to the first point, if you are so confident that it will work, why not just take it yourself and as a patient (presumably with nothing else to lose by doing so) self administer?

Why must your decision to do so be someone else's professional liability for advising you to do so?

FReegards!