Do NOT INGEST or use DCA !

[Guest guest]

My two previous posts regarding DCA are for academic interests only

and to gather more information. I do **NOT** recommend anyone to

attempt to use DCA in any way, shape or form for personal treatment or

anything else. DCA a dangerous substance!

>

> http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/

>

> UPDATE March 15, 2007

> The University of Alberta Discovery

>

> DCA is an odourless, colourless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic,

> small molecule. And researchers at the University of Alberta believe

> it may soon be used as an effective treatment for many forms of cancer.

>

> Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of

> Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in

> several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors.

>

> Michelakis and his colleagues, including post-doctoral fellow Dr.

> Sebastian Bonnet, have published the results of their research in the

> journal Cancer Cell.

>

> Scientists and doctors have used DCA for decades to treat children

> with inborn errors of metabolism due to mitochondrial diseases.

> Mitochondria, the energy producing units in cells, have been connected

> with cancer since the 1930s, when researchers first noticed that these

> organelles dysfunction when cancer is present.

>

> Until recently, researchers believed that cancer-affected mitochondria

> are permanently damaged and that this damage is the result, not the

> cause, of the cancer. But Michelakis, a cardiologist, questioned this

> belief and began testing DCA, which activates a critical mitochondrial

> enzyme, as a way to " revive " cancer-affected mitochondria.

>

> The results astounded him.

>

> Michelakis and his colleagues found that DCA normalized the

> mitochondrial function in many cancers, showing that their function

> was actively suppressed by the cancer but was not permanently damaged

> by it.

>

> More importantly, they found that the normalization of mitochondrial

> function resulted in a significant decrease in tumor growth both in

> test tubes and in animal models. Also, they noted that DCA, unlike

> most currently used chemotherapies, did not have any effects on

> normal, non-cancerous tissues.

>

> " I think DCA can be selective for cancer because it attacks a

> fundamental process in cancer development that is unique to cancer

> cells, " Michelakis said. " One of the really exciting things about this

> compound is that it might be able to treat many different forms of

> cancer " .

>

> Another encouraging thing about DCA is that, being so small, it is

> easily absorbed in the body, and, after oral intake, it can reach

> areas in the body that other drugs cannot, making it possible to treat

> brain cancers, for example.

>

> Also, because DCA has been used in both healthy people and sick

> patients with mitochondrial diseases, researchers already know that it

> is a relatively non-toxic molecule that can be immediately tested

> patients with cancer.

>

> " 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 "

> Dario Alteri

> Director University of Massachusetts Cancer Center

>

> Investing in Research

>

> The DCA compound is not patented and not owned by any pharmaceutical

> company, and, therefore, would likely be an inexpensive drug to

> administer, says Michelakis, the Canada Research Chair in Pulmonary

> Hypertension and Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program with

> Capital Health, one of Canada's largest health authorities.

>

> However, as DCA is not patented, Michelakis is concerned that it may

> be difficult to find funding from private investors to test DCA in

> clinical trials. He is grateful for the support he has already

> received from publicly funded agencies, such as the Canadian

> Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), and he is hopeful such support

> will continue and allow him to conduct clinical trials of DCA on

> cancer patients.

>

> Michelakis' research is currently funded by the CIHR, the Canada

> Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Research Chairs program, and the

> Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.

>

> " This preliminary research is encouraging and offers hope to thousands

> of Canadians and all others around the world who are afflicted by

> cancer, as it accelerates our understanding of and action around

> targeted cancer treatments, " said Dr. Philip Branton, Scientific

> Director of the CIHR Institute of Cancer.

>

> DCA and Cancer Patients

>

> The University of Alberta's DCA Research Team is set to launch

> clinical trials on humans in the spring of 2007 pending government

> approval. Knowing that thousands of cancer patients die weekly while

> waiting for a cure, Dr. Michelakis and his team are working at

> accelerated speed, condensing research that usually takes years into

> months. Fundraisers at the University of Alberta are determined to

> raise the money to allow this next phase of research to begin. Once

> Health Canada grants formal approval, the University of Alberta's

> Research Team will begin testing DCA on patients living with cancer.

> Results with regards to the safety and efficacy of treatment should be

> known late this year.

>

> " If there were a magic bullet, though, it might be something like

> dichloroacetate, or DCA… "

> Newsweek, January 23, 2007

>

> UPDATE January 23, 2007 - Investigators at the University of Alberta

> have recently reported that a drug previously used in humans for the

> treatment of rare disorders of metabolism is also able to cause tumor

> regression in a number of human cancers growing in animals. This drug,

> dichloroacetate (DCA), appears to suppress the growth of cancer cells

> without affecting normal cells, suggesting that it might not have the

> dramatic side effects of standard chemotherapies.

>

> At this point, the University of Alberta, the Alberta Cancer Board and

> Capital Health do not condone or advise the use of dichloroacetate

> (DCA) in human beings for the treatment of cancer since no human

> beings have gone through clinical trials using DCA to treat cancer.

> However, the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board are

> committed to performing clinical trials in the immediate future in

> consultation with regulatory agencies such as Health Canada. We

> believe that because DCA has been used on human beings in Phase 1 and

> Phase 2 trials of metabolic diseases, the cancer clinical trials

> timeline for our research will be much shorter than usual.

>