Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: thedoc on 04/08/2015 23:50:01
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Marilyn Fawcett asked the Naked Scientists:
My question: does DCA cure cancer?
Marilyn from Canada here...your podcasts (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/)are brilliant, I walk 3 hours a day and always have either your podcast (or history extra) on my headset.
Thanks
What do you think?
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"Although preliminary studies have shown DCA can slow the growth of certain tumors in animal studies and in vitro studies "Available evidence does not support the use of DCA for cancer treatment at this time."[3] Physicians warned of potential problems if people attempt to try DCA outside a controlled clinical trial. "If it starts going badly, who is following you before it gets out of control? By the time you realize your liver is failing, you're in big trouble", said Laura Shanner, Associate Professor of Health Ethics at the University of Alberta.[10] Notably, at least one fraudster, Hazim Gaber, has been convicted and sentenced to 33 months in prison for selling fake DCA to cancer sufferers.[11]
[Wikipedia, "Dichloroacetic acid"]
33 months isn't long enough. The schmuck ought to serve the last half of his sentence in an urn.
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I've been interested in alternative cancer treatment options for some time. We are at a gold age for new cancer treatment in this decade - immunotherapy for melanoma metastases + surgery, biological therapy to inhibit angiogenesis in lung cancer, radiotherapy, cytotoxic chemotherapy etc.
We need atleast 10 more years to realize what's good and what's bad for cancer treatment. One thing is sure, all these new treatments are really bloody expensive. You need to break the bank or sell your property to take bio therapy for a couple of years etc. Mostly these are experimental drugs.
The same is with Sodium Dichloroacetate. It has been around since 1970 as an orphan drug to treat children with congenital mitochriondrial enzyme disorders. The way it works is by inhibiting one enzyme which lowers acidity in the cells (more on that http://www.dcaguide.org/how-dca-works (http://www.dcaguide.org/how-dca-works) ,I can't provide an ultra accurate explanation).
If you lower your cell acidity (for example with DCA or SodiumBicarbonate) - you get positive results on your disease. Acidity causes your cells to mutate, disrupts the normal metabolism, causes the cells to break off to the blood stream and metastase.
So yeah, DCA can help some cancers. The problem is that it is so bloody cheap and unpatentable - no one wants to invest money for clinical research with this stuff. It costs about 1 billion $ and takes about 5 - 10 years to provide the world with a approved legit drug. DCA wont be able to bring so much cash so it will probably never undergo the procedures it needs to become a valid drug. We must remember that it was already used as a drug for the reasons mentioned above, just not for cancer.
(http://www.dcaguide.org/dca-history-and-usage (http://www.dcaguide.org/dca-history-and-usage) )
Your best bet would be to search the internet yourself for more information. In my opinion, DCA shouldn't replace your therapy, it should support your therapy because it affects your metabolism in a positive way which can help you become cancer free.
It even could support conventional methods such as radical surgery or radiotherapy. It can be combined with tamoxifen when fighting breast cancer etc. But it shouldn't be combined with doxorubicin for example.
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... Sodium Dichloroacetate ...
See ... https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-latest-chapter-in-the-seemingly-never-ending-saga-of-dichloroacetate-as-a-cancer-treatment/
... lower your cell acidity (for example with DCA or SodiumBicarbonate).
See ... https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alkaline_diet#Blood
(Even if you could achieve alkalosis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkalosis), it's not a cancer treatment.)
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... Sodium Dichloroacetate ...
See ... https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-latest-chapter-in-the-seemingly-never-ending-saga-of-dichloroacetate-as-a-cancer-treatment/
... lower your cell acidity (for example with DCA or SodiumBicarbonate).
See ... https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alkaline_diet#Blood
(Even if you could achieve alkalosis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkalosis) it's not a cancer treatment.)
All articles on Sciencebasedmedicine.org are relatively subjective, if you look up, they have one point of view - dichloroacetate is bullcrap.
Look up other sites which debate on Dichloroacetate - https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/dichloroacetate-dca-treatment-strategy/ (https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/dichloroacetate-dca-treatment-strategy/).
Medicor Cancer clinics - http://medicorcancer.com/ (http://medicorcancer.com/) - actually treat patents with Sodium Dichloroacetate + other ordinary cancer treatments. You can look up the interview yourself:
Regarding lowering the acidity.. we are not talking about achieving alkalosis in your body which would be deadly and can be often seen in intensive therapy units, we are talking about lowering your acidity.
I wouldn't provide links on why alkaline diet and cellular environment is good for your health (this can be achieved not only with drugs but with a right diet - lower meat, higher greens).
Higher acidity in your tissues can lead to:
- intercellular matrix breakdown.This lets the cancer cells leave the tumour and enter the bloodstream, the lymph and thus travel to other distant parts of the body or lymphnodes. This is how Stage IV cancer develops ( T4NxM1).
- higher acidity in cells causes enzymes to lose their structure hence why they working inefficiently and the cellular metabolism changes,
- higher acidity leads to lower oxygen intake,
and many more. Look up the any source on acidity and cancer and you'll soon find out that it's one of the reasons why cancer thrives in the body.
Yeah, you can mention that cancer is caused by mutations in the genetic material and the rise of prooncogenes in the cell. That is true. That's how the modern medicine looks at cancer genesis.
However, let's look at the fact that most of the cancer patients have acidity in their cancerious tissues (due the Warburg effect and Lactic acid build up. Anaerobic glicolysis). I won't repeat the reasons why lowering the acidity in such conditions can be really beneficial.
The Canadian OICC has released an abstract on DCA last year, If I'm lucky - I will find it and share that interesting document.
Update:
Here it is. Read on: http://www.oicc.ca/uploads/dca-health-professional.pdf
P.S. People like Hazim Gaber give DCA a bad name, if you want to find quality stuff - look on trusted places like Amazon or local drug stores, not some random sites on the internet which want to fill their pockets with someones suffering.
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Ummm.... the answer to the original question would be an unequivocal no.
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Acidity causes your cells to mutate, disrupts the normal metabolism, causes the cells to break off to the blood stream and metastase.
Are you actually serious with this nonsense?
This is a science forum.
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All articles on Sciencebasedmedicine.org are relatively subjective...
The link I gave was to an article written by Professor David Gorski, MD & PhD (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-latest-chapter-in-the-seemingly-never-ending-saga-of-dichloroacetate-as-a-cancer-treatment/), whose day-job is an oncologist, who is part of the peer-review process for scientific papers, and in his spare time exposes cancer-quackery, but what does he know ?
I wouldn't provide links on why alkaline diet ...
Why not ?. I can, e.g.... https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/coral2.html (written by an MD ).
... Look up the any source on acidity and cancer ...
That sounds like ... https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Do_your_own_research
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The way it works is by inhibiting one enzyme which lowers acidity in the cells
Let's see some evidence [like peer-reviewed.... in actual journals].
Last I checked, DCA's limited role in cancer supression involved countering the Warburg effect - which enables cancer cells to avoid excess ROS-generation from mitochondrial respiration.
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Acidity causes your cells to mutate, disrupts the normal metabolism, causes the cells to break off to the blood stream and metastase.
Are you actually serious with this nonsense?
This is a science forum.
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Let's see some evidence [like peer-reviewed.... in actual journals].
Last I checked, DCA's limited role in cancer supression involved countering the Warburg effect - which enables cancer cells to avoid excess ROS-generation from mitochondrial respiration.
1) Why acidity promotes oncogenesis?
"Warburg effect—increased glucose consumption, decreased oxidative phosphorylation, and accompanying lactate production—are also distinguishing features of oncogene activation."
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867408010660 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867408010660)
2) Why acidity distrups normal cell metabolism?
A) Read the same article above.
B) Check a legit biochemistry textbook and look up on how pH changes prevent the normal binding of an enzyme and the substrate. Then sit and think for a minute how this affects the speed of intracellular chemical reactions. Look up what "metabolism" is and what importance do enzymes have in its harmony.
3) Article on why low PH promotes cancer invasion?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3594450/ (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3594450/)
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Took me five minutes to find scientifical arguments to back up my statement.
How DCA works ? I have already provided tons of information on that but I can repeat it again.
(Read https://www.cancertreatmentsresearch.com/dichloroacetate-dca-treatment-strategy/ again, the guy named Daniel provides links to every statement he makes, why haven't you read it yet and continue to discuss about it ? :D )
Basically, DCA does this:
Inhibits PDK --> Cancer cells reduce their Warburg effect, normal metabolism is returned, less pyruvate to lactic acid, more pyruvate to the H. Kreb's cycle --> the cell starts to produce energy more in an aerobic way, less in an anaerobic way --> tons of benefits such as:
A) More ROS are generated when oxygen is used in the Kreb's cycle. This inhibits tumour growth and promotes apoptosis - the natural chain of death for damaged cells.
B) Reduces lactid acid --> reduces the acidity (low PH) in cancer cells. We already covered up why low PH is bad for your cells and is good for cancer.
C) Less acidity in the tissues - less pain for people with tumours.
etc.
There are more intracellular things going on with the help of Dichloroacetate, I wouldn't quote the articles I've posted so far. Please read them before disagreeing.
Let me ask you a sincere question.
Have you ever studied biochemistry, physiology and oncology ?
Yes? Then go refresh your memory. What we are talking about is completely logical and has tons of articles which support these claims.
No ? Then why are you throwing insults accusing me of spreading nonsense?
Keep it professional. Accuse someone of nonsense when you're sure that you understand what you are talking about.
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Acidity causes your cells to mutate, disrupts the normal metabolism, causes the cells to break off to the blood stream and metastase.
Basically, DCA does this:
Inhibits PDK --> Cancer cells reduce their Warburg effect, normal metabolism is returned, less pyruvate to lactic acid
"Why acidity promotes oncogenesis. Warburg effect—increased glucose consumption, decreased oxidative phosphorylation, and accompanying lactate production
Your focus is on acidity, when it should be P53-mutations.
"TP53, which encodes the tumour-suppressor protein p53, is the most frequently mutated gene across all cancer types. The presence of mutant p53 predisposes to cancer development, promotes the survival of cancer cells, and is associated with ineffective therapeutic responses and unfavourable prognoses."
Nat Rev Clin Oncol. 2017 Sep 26. doi: 10.1038/nrclinonc.2017.151. Therapeutic targeting of p53: all mutants are equal, but some mutants are more equal than others.
DCA's anti-tumoral activity is primarily mediated by it's ability to induce transcriptional activation of P53 and it's target genes.
The increased pyruvate to lactate conversion in which you speak of occurs in tumors with mutant P53 status - which exhibit high glucose uptake as opposed to wild-type P53 status - but the P53 target-gene TIGAR, regulates glycolysis.... not the Warburg effect.
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Your focus is on acidity, when it should be P53-mutations.
DCA's anti-tumoral activity is primarily mediated by it's ability to induce transcriptional activation of P53 and it's target genes.
The increased pyruvate to lactate conversion in which you speak of occurs in tumors with mutant P53 status - which exhibit high glucose uptake as opposed to wild-type P53 status - but the P53 target-gene TIGAR, regulates glycolysis.... not the Warburg effect.
Br J Cancer. 2008 Oct 7; 99(7): 989–994.
doi: 10.1038/sj.bjc.6604554. PMCID: PMC2567082
Dichloroacetate (DCA) as a potential metabolic-targeting therapy for cancer
"The gene that normally antagonises Akt, PTEN, is mutated (loss of function mutation) in a large number of cancers. Very recent data revealed even more links between p53 and metabolism:
p53 regulates the expression of a critical enzyme of GLY through the production of TIGAR and is also directly regulating the expression of a subunit of cytochrome c oxidase, an important element of complex IV of the electron transport chain in mitochondria (reviewed in (Pan and Mak, 2007)).
In other words, the most common molecular abnormality in cancer, that is, the loss of p53 function, induces metabolic and mitochondrial changes, compatible with the glycolytic phenotype."
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Cancer Gene Therapy (2011) 18, 2–11; doi:10.1038/cgt.2010.63; published online 22 October 2010. Understanding wild-type and mutant p53 activities in human cancer: new landmarks on the way to targeted therapies.
Three decades of p53 research have led to many advances in understanding the basic biology of normal and cancer cells. Nonetheless, the detailed functions of p53 in normal cells, and even more so in cancer cells, remain obscure.
A major breakthrough is the realization that mutant p53 has a life of its own: it contributes to cancer not only through loss of activity, but also through gain of specific ‘mutant functions’.
This new focus on mutant p53 is the rationale behind the meeting series dedicated to advances on mutant p53 biology. This review provides an overview of results presented at the Fourth International Workshop on Mutant p53, held in Akko, Israel in March 2009. New roles and functions of p53 relevant for tumor suppressions were presented, including the regulation of microRNAs networks, the modulation of cell–stroma interactions and the induction of senescence.
A main focus of the meeting was the rapidly growing body of knowledge on autonomous properties of mutant p53 and on their oncogenic ‘gain of function’ impact. Importantly, the meeting highlighted that, 30 years after p53 discovery, research on mutant p53 is entering the clinical and translational era.
Two major steps forward in this respect are a better understanding of the active mechanism of small drugs targeting mutant p53 in tumor cells and an improved definition of the prognostic and predictive value of mutant p53 in human cancer.