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New and experimental approaches to treating & healing cancer DCA (Dichloroacetate) Cancer Research: Effective Treatment for Many Different Types of Tumor via Activation & Normalization of Mitochondrial Function?by Healing Cancer Naturally © August 2007 I recently received the following letter from a site visitor: “I today came across an interesting development related to the Budwig Diet [to which Healing Cancer Naturally gives c. 100 pages of coverage]. It seems a Canadian researcher has discovered that a drug already used in humans to treat rare metabolic disorders has the astonishing effect of destroying all cancer cells. His website is www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/. On that website you can find further links to his research paper and articles published by reputable Economist and NewScientist magazines. What really struck me about his discovery is the relevance to the Budwig diet. To give you a general background, this drug, DCA, triggers the mitochondria in cancer cells to become active again which then leads to the death of the cancer cell by apoptosis. Indeed, he built upon the work of Otto Warburg (1930) in his paper, just as Budwig did with her diet. Sadly, there is a twist to this story and that is that because the drug has been in use to treat rare metabolic disorders for decades it no longer has a patent. Therefore, no pharmaceutical company can make any significant amount of money from this treatment and so the researcher has had to start his own website (linked above) to generate funds from the public and philanthropic private sources. I believe the Canadian government has provided him with some funding also. I think this is amazing news for the Budwig diet - well at least the parallels are quite clear to me and this discovery may be worth incorporating into your Healing Cancer Naturally website.” Richard’s letter made me look into the subject of DCA and here is a summary of what I found: Cardiologist Evangelos D. Michelakis, MD, FACC, FAHA, Associate Professor of Medicine working at the Department of Medicine, University of Alberta Canada recently discovered that DCA (an inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, odourless and colourless small molecule) causes regression in several types of cancer in laboratory experimentation, including breast, brain and lung tumors. His research results have attracted comments such as “If there were a magic bullet, though, it might be something like dichloroacetate, or DCA…” (Newsweek, January 23, 2007) and a review published by “Science” titled “Metabolic Targeting as an Anti-cancer Strategy; Dawn of a New Era?” (see the media section of depmed.ualberta.ca/dca for a copy of this paper). DCA has been used for decades to treat children with rare congenital disorders of metabolism due to mitochondrial diseases since DCA activates a critical mitochondrial enzyme. Mitochondria are the energy-producing units in cells. As early as the 1930s, researchers noticed that these organelles dysfunction in cases of cancer. It was thought until recently that mitochondria affected by cancer have suffered permanent damage, with the mitochondrial damage resulting from the cancer (and not being the cause of cancer). Questioning this assumption, Dr. Michelakis began testing (in vitro and in vivo, i.e. in test tubes and animal models) DCA’s ability to "revive" cancer-affected mitochondria. Intriguing results with cancer To his and his colleagues’ surprise, DCA was found to normalize the mitochondrial function in numerous cancers, showing that while the
function of these organelles was actively suppressed by the cancer, it was not permanently damaged by the disease. According to Dr. Michelakis, "... DCA can be selective for cancer because it attacks a fundamental process in cancer development that is unique to cancer cells." Dario Alteri, Director of the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center said about DCA: ”The results are intriguing because they point to the critical role that mitochondria play: they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy”. Special advantages of DCA Size: Research sponsors needed In contrast to the very expensive chemotherapeutic agents, the DCA compound could be an inexpensive cancer drug to administer since it
is unpatented and not owned by a pharmaceutical company. By the same token, funding from private investors allowing the conducting of clinical trials of DCA on cancer patients may/will be hard to come
by. So far, support has been given by publicly funded agencies like the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR). Dr. Philip Branton, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Cancer comments: Cinical trials of DCA on cancer patients upcoming: donations requested So far, no human beings have gone through clinical trials using DCA as a cancer treatment. Rising to the challenge of an endeavour not
supported by the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Michelakis and his University of Alberta’s DCA Research Team are working at accelerated speed to allow taking the drug from the laboratory (in vivo and in
vitro) to the next phase of research, the clinical trial. They are hopeful to be able to publish results regarding safety and efficacy of DCA treatment on cancer patients late this year. Note by Healing Cancer Naturally: Personally, I don’t advocate animal experiments for the reasons sketched below. I am
including the above pertinent research however since it has been done in any case and since currently, no doctor who wants to gain official approval for a new method of
his invention can get around doing them. While test results occasionally ARE transferrable to human beings, more generally speaking, animal experiments could
justifiably be called “as useless and dangerous for humans as cruel to animals” (e.g. thalidomide was tested safe on rats while penicillin would have never been allowed for
human consumption had it initially been tested on guinea pigs or hamsters, since it kills those species!). For a good summary re ”Does animal testing help human medicine
?” see for instance www.saav.org.za, and for thalidomide & an entire online book 'ANIMAL RESEARCH TAKES LIVES - Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer' see www.health.org.nz.
Dr Irwin D Bross PhD writes, “There is no good factual evidence to show that the use of animals in cancer research has led to the prevention or cure of a single human cancer.” Full quote of Dr Bross and others under On Cancer Research. The subject of cancer research based upon animal models of human disease is in fact of such major importance that Healing Cancer Naturally devotes many pages to it. Learn about the detailed scientific arguments and the fundamental implications of the issue of animal experimentation for everyone’s health, recovery and safety, making it a possible matter of life or death for many, here.
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