Off topic: Goodbye cancer!

[Guest guest]

Hi, all.

I want to let you know about what appears to me to be a major

breakthrough in research on cancer treatment. I'm not selling

anything, and I was not involved with the research, but I think it's

very exciting! I hope you won't think I've parted company with my

sanity when I tell you this.

I'm referring to work recently published by researchers at the

University of Alberta in Canada. The full paper can be found at the

following site:

http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/cancer_cell.pdf

I'm not exaggerating when I call this a major breakthrough.

Briefly, these researchers have found that a relatively simple, non-

patentable substance, namely dichloroacetate, which has been used in

the past to control lactic acidosis in children with mitochondrial

disease, is able to knock out a variety of types of cancer cells

without causing systemic problems. They have demonstrated this by

experiments in three types of human cancer cell cultures and in mice.

This substance works by blocking the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase

kinase, causing pyruvate to be converted to acetyl Co-A and be fed

into the Krebs cycle, instead of being reduced to lactic acid as

normally occurs in cancer cells, and thus forcing the cancer cells to

change their metabolism from glycolysis to oxidative phosphorylation,

like normal cells. As a result of this change, they are able to

cause these cells to undergo apoptosis and die, rather than being

immortal as cancer cells are. In the mice, they put this substance

in their driinkinig water, and they began to see effects on their

cancer within one week!

Because it operates on a feature that is common to all cancer cells

(as shown by Otto Warburg in 1930, for which he won the Nobel prize),

this substance promises to be a universal treatment for all types of

cancers.

Because it is nonpatentable, it should be relatively inexpensive.

This also means that non-pharma money will have to be found for the

phase II and III clinical trials, and they've started a fund for

that. Because there is already a history of using this substance in

humans to treat lactic acidosis in mitochondrial disease, it is

already known that the side effects are mnimal.

I am fairly familiar with the biochemistry of the intermediary

metabolism, and I can tell you that the paper looks good to me. I

would invite comments from others on this. If this is what it looks

like to me, the ramifications are huge to society, the economy, the

cancer industry, and to all of us as individuals. I think this will

make it even more imperative that we figure out what to do for

Alzheimer's, because the average life expectancy is going to jump.

When futurists used to talk about the possibility of " a cure for

cancer " being found, I always thought they were nuts! I don't think

so anymore.

Rich