A little old but still good- Cure for Cancer?

[AmericanWeiner]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-ca

Summary: Scientists discover something about cells that allows a new sort of treatment to trigger a suicide mechanism in cancer cells (and only cancer cells). However, it's unpatented so big money doesn't want a part of it. Clinical trials will have to be funded by charity.

Incredible.

I'm not sure about how I feel about it being unpatented. On one hand, it's going to be dirt cheap and easy to find, but on the other hand, selling it to a big company would get it to the market much faster.

[MegaPhony]

Having at least a little bit of background knowledge in biology, the idea sounds perfectly valid. Makes sense because it's one of the things that would be overlooked because of it's simplicity, when usually those are the things that are most effective.

[gregulus]

It can't be patented. It's already on the market for a certain metabolic disorder.

Reports in the lay press after the 2007 University of Alberta announcement claim that dichloroacetate "has actually been used safely in humans for decades",[18] but the limited scholarly literature suggests side effects of pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients.[18] A clinical trial where DCA was given to patients of MELAS (a form of genetically inherited lactic acidosis) at 25 mg/kg/day was ended prematurely due to excessive peripheral nerve toxicity.[19] Dichloroacetate can also have anxiolytic or sedative effects.[20]
Animal studies suggest that the neuropathy and neurotoxicity during chronic dichloroacetate treatment may be partly due to depletion of thiamine, and thiamine supplementation in rats reduced these effects.[21] However, more recent studies in humans suggest that peripheral neuropathy is a common side effect during chronic DCA treatment, even with coadministration of oral thiamine.[22][23] An additional study reported that 50 mg/kg/day DCA treatment resulted in unsteady gait and lethargy in two patients, with symptoms occurring after one month for one patient and two months for the second. Gait disturbance and consciousness were recovered with cessation of DCA, however sensory nerve action potentials did not recover in one month.[24],

It's not all peaches and cream yet, guys.

[Smokey D]

Also, only some cancers are responsive.

There can never be a 'cure for cancer' because the term refers to a category of disease rather than a single problem.

[spitfirejunky]

This isn't at all surprising.

Cancer occurs about eight times less in the population of professional athletes for similar reasons. But it's clearly not a full-proof deterrent to keep mitochondria active.

[TheDarkHorse]

Also, only some cancers are responsive.

There can never be a 'cure for cancer' because the term refers to a category of disease rather than a single problem.

we may not call it a cure, but a treatment.

The only problem i have with this is actually selling it to big business. With our medical industry acting as a business, they arent looking for cures, but long drawn out treatments for income.

[Smokey D]

But not all cancers are responsive to treatments either. Some treatments that are useful in combating one cancer are useless when trying to deal with another. This new method is the same, though it certainly offers a lot of hope for many different cancer types.

Another interesting development is the use of hormone inhibitors to prevent tumors from securing a blood supply.