ryoung5367's blog

dca in cancer treatments

 abuse

I recently stumbled across this.  It may be old news to some of you, but I found it quite fascinating. 

It would seem that in 2007 researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada found a cheap and easy to produce drug that kills many types of cancers such as lung, breast and brain cancer cells.  This seemed so unbelievable to me that I tried my own research and found many sites talking about it.

The drug that did this was Dichloroacetate better known as DCA.  It turns out this drug is already marketed for use in other medical conditions so it has already been approved for use, just not approved for a cancer treatment.

Here is how it works:

Cancer cells don’t use the little power stations found in most human cells - the mitochondria. Instead, they use glycolysis, which is less effective and more wasteful.

Doctors have long believed the reason for this is because the mitochondria were damaged somehow. But, it turns out the mitochondria were just dormant, and DCA starts them back up again.

The side effect of this is it also reactivates a process called apoptosis. You see, mitochondria contain an all-too-important self-destruct button that can’t be pressed in cancer cells. Without it, tumors grow larger as cells refuse to be extinguished. Fully functioning mitochondria, thanks to DCA, can once again die.

With glycolysis turned off, the body produces less lactic acid, so the bad tissue around cancer cells doesn’t break down and seed new tumors.

http://www.healthsalon.org/94/scientists-m...ek-more-on-dca/

The above linked article was from 2007 so I tried to find a more recent study and I found this:

PURPOSE: A recent landmark study demonstrated that Dichloroacetate (DCA) treatment promoted apoptosis in lung, breast, and glioblastoma cancer cell lines by shifting metabolism from aerobic glycolysis to glucose oxidation coupled with NFAT-Kv1.5 axis remodeling. The objective of this study was to determine whether DCA induces apoptosis in endometrial cancer cells and to assess apoptotic mechanism. METHODS: A panel of endometrial cancer cell lines with varying degrees of differentiation was treated with DCA and analyzed for apoptosis via flow cytometry. Biological correlates such as gene expression, intracellular Ca(2+), and mitochondrial membrane potential were examined to assess apoptotic mechanism. RESULTS: Initiation of apoptosis was observed in five low to moderately invasive cancer cell lines including Ishikawa, RL95-2, KLE, AN3CA, and SKUT1B while treatment had no effect on non-cancerous 293T cells. Two highly invasive endometrial adenocarcinoma cell lines, HEC1A and HEC1B, were found to be resistant to DCA-induced apoptosis. Apoptotic responding cell lines had a significant increase in early and late apoptotis, a decrease in mitochondrial membrane potential, and decreased Survivin transcript abundance, which are consistent with a mitochondrial-regulated mechanism. DCA treatment decreased intracellular calcium levels in most apoptotic responding cell lines which suggests a contribution from the NFAT-Kv1.5-mediated pathway. DCA treatment increased p53 upregulated modulator of apoptosis (PUMA) transcripts in cell lines with an apoptotic response, suggesting involvement of a p53-PUMA-mediated mechanism. CONCLUSIONS: Dichloroacetate effectively sensitizes most endometrial cancer cell lines to apoptosis via mitochondrial, NFAT-Kv1.5, and PUMA-mediated mechanisms. Further investigation of the cancer therapeutic potential of DCA is warranted.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18423823

Looks like the results are positive for many types of cancers.

If you or your family have been touched by cancer and would like more information on the use of DCA as a treatment see the link below.

This site is to help inform people of the exciting research done on DCA by scientists at the University of Alberta. In January 2007, a team of scientists at the University of Alberta published a paper in the scientific journal, Cancer Cell, describing the discovery that a simple, cheap molecule, DCA, worked to reactivate the apoptosis mechanism of cancer cells, causing rapid shrinkage of tumors in rats. Mitochondrial reactivation represents an entirely new approach to treating cancer.

The tumors shrank 70% in three weeks.

http://www.thedcasite.com/