So, we hear news of a miraculous treatment for cancer. Disappointingly, the story is an old one which has somehow resurfaced on the blogosphere.
When we originally published the story four years ago, it created a frenzy on the internet which took us by surprise. Our story reported a new type of treatment that in animal experiments showed promise of potentially being able to tackle most types of human cancer.
We often report developments in cancer research, but nothing had ever attracted such a wave of interest. The drug involved, a simple molecule called dichloro-acetate, or DCA, appeared to work by blocking the unusual, sugar-gobbling mechanism called glycolysis by which most cancer cells generate their energy, and so which potentially marks them out from healthy cells.
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Exposed to DCA, cancer cells stopped making energy from sugar and resumed making it the way healthy cells do, in chambers called mitochondria. This stopped cancer cells from growing and multiplying, and caused them to wither and die instead.
What added to the intrigue was that DCA is such a cheap, simple molecule that no-one has ever patented it. Also, it was already being used to treat rare mitochondrial diseases. Within weeks, patients were trying to get their own supplies of DCA, and some entrepreneurs set up websites to sell it, that were subsequently declared illegal and closed down by the US Food and Drug Administration.
So what happened after the frenzy died down?
The answer is that it was finally tested in five patients with aggressive brain cancer by Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who had conducted the original experiments in animals.
The results, published last year in Science Translational Medicine, revealed that it probably extended the lives of four of the patients, while one other died.
Most importantly, Michelakis demonstrated from brain scans and biopsies that DCA appeared to work as he had predicted, arresting the growth of cancer cells by switching them back to normal energy production in mitochondria. The experiments also showed that beneficial effects took a few months to kick in. Importantly, Michelakis said that despite the small trial, it would be impossible to tell whether DCA works or not until it is tested in a placebo-controlled trial.
As far as we know, no further trials have been conducted, so the jury is still out on whether it may do any good. We reported the new results in Â鶹´«Ã½ and included news of other teams around the world developing treatments targeting glycolysis.
Some other treatments that disrupt energy metabolism, such as the drug metformin taken by diabetics, were also showing signs of activity against cancer, for example. So for now, we are a little bit wiser about how DCA might work, but until someone does a much larger, well-organised trial, it would be unwise to assume that taking it will be safe or do any good.
The more encouraging news is that other teams are now investigating the scope for targeting glycolysis, and although it could be a long haul to demonstrate whether any work, it does provide another avenue of attack against a disease which continues to push medicine to its limits.
