Cure For Most Cancers Found

[HAZE]

Wow, this is GREAT news.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10971&feedId=online-news_rss20

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 tumours.

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.

[silver05]

It really is...my dad passed of cancer..sad way to go.

[bxbomb]

it will never get FDA approval or funding as there is too much money to be made in the Cancer business

[cookie6]

Too Good To Be True

[lalate]

It really is...my dad passed of cancer..sad way to go.

ditto.

[misskittie]

it will never get FDA approval or funding as there is too much money to be made in the Cancer business

You're 100% right. A very good friend of the family is a top sales rep for a pharmaceutical company which will remain nameless. She told me 5 years ago that there was a cure for HIV/AIDS but it won't be released because too much money is made on these people being in the hospitals. It's quite sad to know that there is something out there to help people but because of greed, and money - aka the AMERICAN WAY - they won't get those cures to continue on with their lives. But hey, everyone thinks America is all about fighting for freedom and protecting our citizens.....what a great way to repay the people of the world suffering from these painful and horrific diseases.

It's really sad......

[tastey]

You're 100% right. A very good friend of the family is a top sales rep for a pharmaceutical company which will remain nameless. She told me 5 years ago that there was a cure for HIV/AIDS but it won't be released because too much money is made on these people being in the hospitals. It's quite sad to know that there is something out there to help people but because of greed, and money - aka the AMERICAN WAY - they won't get those cures to continue on with their lives. But hey, everyone thinks America is all about fighting for freedom and protecting our citizens.....what a great way to repay the people of the world suffering from these painful and horrific diseases.

It's really sad......

i can almost guarantee you that that is not true

it is simple economics, in this case, game theory. while the combined payoff for the whole pharma and medical industry would suffer if a cure was found, the incentive, the payoff, for a single company that would be able to patent a cure would be SO big that all sort of cooperation between pharma companies would simply become redundant.

like, if bayer would put a patent on a cure for aids, they could literally wipe out most of the competition with one move.

for this reason the scenario you describe above is extremely unlikely

that a "top pharma rep" would perpetuate such leftwing propaganda crap is just really, really unprofessional.

[misskittie]

i can almost guarantee you that that is not true

it is simple economics, in this case, game theory. while the combined payoff for the whole pharma and medical industry would suffer if a cure was found, the incentive, the payoff, for a single company that would be able to patent a cure would be SO big that all sort of cooperation between pharma companies would simply become redundant.

like, if bayer would put a patent on a cure for aids, they could literally wipe out most of the competition with one move.

for this reason the scenario you describe above is extremely unlikely

that a "top pharma rep" would perpetuate such leftwing propaganda crap is just really, really unprofessional.

If you say so...but I happen to believe she's telling the truth and for the reasons I stated. Not saying you can't be right, but I think the government would much rather the population dwindle down. Just my opinion but yours is definitely a possibility.

[tastey]

i am sorry, this is not against you specifically... but...

if there is one thing i cannot stand, and which IMO explains exactly what is wrong with the world today, its the "the facts are sound, *but i choose to believe otherwise*, even though all that supports my thesis is hearsay and has no basis in reality"

there is no big difference between your attitude and people blowing themselves for "allah". it is the logical consequence of religious mantra, which is based on *irrational* *beliefs*, just like yours. as soon as you say something like "this and that is certainly true, but i believe otherwise", you are in essence validating this exact course.

who cares about reality as long as you "believe" otherwise though

makes me seriously sick