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Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre
Interesting to note that the university doing the research haven't updated their website since 2010, the last tests involved 5 patients, and there were high dosage side effects.
This story is going around like a chain mail it seems. Its bunk.
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It's likely slow going because large clinical trials cost a lot of money and there's no financial backing from pharmaceutical companies and one of the universities supposedly backed out leaving one of the research teams financially stranded. One of the points here is raising a little awareness so that hopefully, researchers will get funding to work on this. After all, you can't just capture people with cancer and drug them. And 5 people is not nearly enough data for anything much.
And so what about high dosage side effects? As I wrote earlier, just about anything is toxic at a high enough dosage. Even regular painkillers can be harmful, you know that.
Not saying you shouldn't be sceptical, I'm just wondering how you can call it bunk at this point. After all, current evidence suggests that it is effective in treatment against cancer.
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Originally Posted by 2010 Article "Metabolic Modulation of Glioblastoma with Dichloroacetate" Abstract
Solid tumors, including the aggressive primary brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme, develop resistance to cell death, in part as a result of a switch from mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation to cytoplasmic glycolysis. This metabolic remodeling is accompanied by mitochondrial hyperpolarization. We tested whether the small-molecule and orphan drug dichloroacetate (DCA) can reverse this cancer-specific metabolic and mitochondrial remodeling in glioblastoma. Freshly isolated glioblastomas from 49 patients showed mitochondrial hyperpolarization, which was rapidly reversed by DCA. In a separate experiment with five patients who had glioblastoma, we prospectively secured baseline and serial tumor tissue, developed patient-specific cell lines of glioblastoma and putative glioblastoma stem cells (CD133 + , nestin + cells), and treated each patient with oral DCA for up to 15 months. DCA depolarized mitochondria, increased mitochondrial reactive oxygen species, and induced apoptosis in GBM cells, as well as in putative GBM stem cells, both in vitro and in vivo. DCA therapy also inhibited the hypoxia-inducible factor–1a, promoted p53 activation, and suppressed angiogenesis both in vivo and in vitro. The dose-limiting toxicity was a dose-dependent, reversible peripheral neuropathy, and there was no hematologic, hepatic, renal, or cardiac toxicity. Indications of clinical efficacy were present at a dose that did not cause peripheral neuropathy and at serum concentrations of DCA sufficient to inhibit the target enzyme of DCA, pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase II, which was highly expressed in all glioblastomas. Metabolic modulation may be a viable therapeutic approach in the treatment of glioblastoma.
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>> Source :
http://dca-information.pbworks.com/f...oroacetate.pdf
This is the (afaik) the latest study that they finally raised enough money to do and it's very small scale. As you can see, it concludes that DCA does reduce size of brain tumors at a dosage which is smaller than needed to cause the (reversible) negative side effects and the final conclusion is that it may be a viable therapeutic approach in the treatment of brain cancer.
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Originally Posted by Frownland
What types of cancer are susceptible to DCA? I'd like some more information to share with my friends and I'm too lazy to do the research myself.
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According to the article quoted above, it helps against brain tumors that form in glial cells which are helper cells in the brain which, among other things, provide insulation for neurons. I believe it's the most common form of brain cancer.
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Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre
Also, Cancer is a collective term for literally thousands of different illnesses, like the common cold is an umbrella term for lots of different virii. It won't be "Cured" all at once, it will be systematically hunted down piece by piece.
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I agree it's likely it won't be effective in treatment of all cancers, but while there are different kinds, it's worth pointing out that cancer cells across different types generally do share some important traits, like being able to keep their telomers intact with each cell division. The drug targets something which is widely common across different kinds of cancer; non-functional mitochondrias.