January 21, 2007

New/Old Cancer treatment

Someone sent me this link and it sounds good.

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.

DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up
vast amounts of sugar.

Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis’s experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020).
Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump don’t get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see diagram). In order to
survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.

Crucially, though, mitochondria do another job in cells: they activate apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells self-destruct. When cells switch mitochondria off, they become “immortal”, outliving other cells in the tumour and so becoming dominant. Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria reactivate apoptosis and order the abnormal cells to die.

“The results are intriguing because they point to a critical role that mitochondria play:
they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy,” says Dario Altieri, director of the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center in Worcester.

The phenomenon might also explain how secondary cancers form. Glycolysis generates lactic acid, which can break down the collagen matrix holding cells together. This means abnormal cells can be released and float to other parts of the body, where they seed new tumors.

DCA can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients, but this may be a price worth paying if it turns out to be effective against all cancers. The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. 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. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.

Paul Clarke, a cancer cell biologist at the University of Dundee in the UK, says the findings challenge the current assumption that mutations, not metabolism, spark off cancers. “The question is: which comes first?” he says.

Posted by The Vorlon at January 21, 2007 3:22 PM
Comments

Test

Posted by: Ted at January 22, 2007 7:10 AM

This sounds encouraging. Keep us informed.

Posted by: Reb Orrell at January 22, 2007 7:48 AM

Thanks for posting this because it gives me a new understanding of how things can get off track with our cells, the basic structure of our physical body. As you begin to investigate alternative treatments, I think you'll discover the approach moves from 'fighting' the bad cells to 'encouraging and supporting' the good cells. The good cells remember; the bad cells are forgetting.

So while you may not feel as though you are 'doing' something positive to beat and defeat those bad cells, in fact you can by looking at the great job the good cells are doing in your body. It is actually one of the premises that chemo uses in trying to kill off the bad cells because they know the power of the good cells to sustain life. They sort of trust that although the focus is more on the power of the drugs rather than on the power of the spirit of life to sustain itself.

I have a favorite quote that I clipped from The Press from their thought for the day. It is by Voltaire..."the art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."

So failure not being an option is the mantra of your good cells...sort of loving the job they are doing beautifully and making that the focus; it is amazing and miraculous. The chemo was also like a system reboot and now it is time to look see that the system is up and running without any bugs.

Take care.
Pat B

Posted by: Patricia Berggoetz at January 25, 2007 10:31 AM