Cancer Cure?

[Charley]

Seems to be a legit study. Report in New Scientist.
Sure hope this one works out. Smoke Cigars without guilt maybe? Even in New York?

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

 

[Connemara]

Amazing news. Glad to hear it.

 

[whodini]

The science behind it sounds fairly accurate but I'll leave it to clinical trials to actually prove it.

 

[Stazy]

An excellent start to 2007!

Cancer runs on my mom's side of the family, so I'm happy to hear about this.

 

[whodini]

At this point I'm sure cancer runs in everyone's family. My own included.

 

[Stazy]

Originally Posted by whodini

At this point I'm sure cancer runs in everyone's family. My own included.

That may be true, but from what I know, no one on my dad's side has gotten cancer. Perhaps it is only a matter of time.

 

[tiecollector]

sounds quite nice if it works. I read last year that someone was trying to take nano tubes and inject them into cancer cells then run some radiation that will heat them up and kill the cancer DNA.

 

[brimley]

Unsurprisingly overstated article. Cancer cells evade apoptosis (programmed cell death) through a variety of means. While a mutation may stop the abnormal cell from signalling for cell death, which DCA supposedly treats, it may also change the cell in a way that it doesn't respond to the signals. Then you may run into a problem of switching on dormant, oxygen-starved cells, which could spark cell growth.

There are plenty of treatments that work in a mouse or a petri dish and have failed in clinical trials. Still, it could be a good therapy, perhaps in combination with antivascular drugs in development.

I'm not sure we'll ever find a cure for cancer. However, if we can develop a cheap, sensitive screening method for early detection, it should be very treatable.

 

[Matt]

Ok I am a business man and a pragmatist, so of course I get it, but I do hate this:

These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines.

 

[tiecollector]

Originally Posted by nyf

Unsurprisingly overstated article. Cancer cells evade apoptosis (programmed cell death) through a variety of means. While a mutation may stop the abnormal cell from signalling for cell death, which DCA supposedly treats, it may also change the cell in a way that it doesn't respond to the signals. Then you may run into a problem of switching on dormant, oxygen-starved cells, which could spark cell growth.

There are plenty of treatments that work in a mouse or a petri dish and have failed in clinical trials. Still, it could be a good therapy, perhaps in combination with antivascular drugs in development.

I'm not sure we'll ever find a cure for cancer. However, if we can develop a cheap, sensitive screening method for early detection, it should be very treatable.

I'm skeptical too and would be surprised if it worked effectively in practice. I read studies all the time and they are always on the effects of a treatment on a one legged albino amazon dingo during heat 3 days after the vernal equinox. Until I see studies in vitro on humans I'll try not to get too excited.

In my estimation, finding a way to prevent cancer in the first place is the best cure.

 

[Charley]

Possibly cancer will turn out to be as treatable as stomach ulcers.

I doubt that there will be something to really prevent it from occuring. The general increase in the incidence of cancer is attributed to people living longer. So that it is somewhat understood to be a "natural" happening when cells develope so many times. Finding a way to turn off the bad ones would be pretty remarkable.

 

[johnapril]

Originally Posted by tiecollector

Until I see studies in vitro on humans I'll try not to get too excited.
.

That's in vivo. And there's no reason to modify "on humans" with it.