Existing Drug Becomes Cheap Cancer Cure In Canada

University of Alberta scientists do understand the cause of cancer. The dying off of old cells to be replaced by new cells is a normal part of our cellular life-cycle and keeps us well. It seems that in cancerous cells, our body has forgotten how to tell the aged cells how to die off and be replaced by healthy new cells.

This process is governed by the mitochondria and is known as "cell death" or "apoptosis". In a cancer cell, the mitochondria has lost the ability to direct the cell to die off - the sick cell becomes "immortal", spreading and making the person increasingly unwell.

Trials using  dichloroacetate (DCA) have proven this compound can reactivate the mitochondria restoring the cell's original function of "apoptosis" enabling shrinkage in tumor size and mass. Testimonials have shown reversal in illness, remission, clean health tests, increased health and vitality. Favourable results (scientifically measurable) have been accomplished within days (less than a week) of starting treatment with DCA.

"Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the University of Alberta Department of Medicine, has shown that DCA causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors."

It sounds 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, Michelakiss experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell).

Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump dont 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 cant make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.