http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure ... kes_notice



read the article it sounds too good to be true.

yeah it's pretty old. I stumbled across it.

Mononoke wrote:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure ... kes_notice



read the article it sounds too good to be true.

The illustration is full of fail, here is why...

[1] In hypoxic conditions, cancer cells don't switch to glycolysis as another way of making energy. Glycolysis is an integral part of cellular metabolism regardless of whether a cell is cancerous or not. In normal cells under normoxic conditions, glycolysis is followed by the tricarboxylic acid cycle. In hypoxic conditions, lactic acid fermentation occurs instead of the tricarboxylic acid cycle. There is no dichotomy between glycolysis and something else.

[2] Mitochondria switching off or the ability to evade apoptosis per se does NOT make the cells immortal, cell immortality is linked to the activation of telomere maintenance mechanisms such as the telomerase pathway or the ALT pathway. Cells that cannot do this cannot be immortal.

[3] The idea that one may turn mitochondria back "on" is a bit bollocks too, and so is the idea that reactivating mitochondrial apoptotic signalling in cancerous cells (as opposed to turning mitochondria back on) will invariably trigger apoptosis, since there are many possible ways for cancer cells to evade apoptosis even if the mitochondrial components of apoptosis signalling pathways are active.

For a detailed review of how cancer cells may evade apoptosis through various pathways, at premitochondrial, mitochondrial and postmitochondrial levels, please check this.

One of the hallmarks of human cancers is the intrinsic or acquired resistance to apoptosis. Evasion of apoptosis can be part of a cellular stress response to ensure the cell's survival upon exposure to stressful stimuli. Apoptosis resistance may contribute to carcinogenesis, tumor progression, and also treatment resistance, since most current anticancer therapies including chemotherapy as well as radio- and immunotherapies primarily act by activating cell death pathways including apoptosis in cancer cells. Hence, a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms regarding how cellular stress stimuli trigger antiapoptotic mechanisms and how this contributes to tumor resistance to apoptotic cell death is expected to provide the basis for a rational approach to overcome apoptosis resistance mechanisms in cancers.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcb/2010/370835/

It looks like the illustrators of that popular science article that you linked to have been less than rigorous, Mononoke.

None of this however means that dicholoroacetate may not be able to trigger apoptosis in certain cancers with certain mechanisms of evading apoptosis, as always, though, one must start to account for heterogeneity in cancer cells and the very real possibility of ending up with a population of resistant cells.

I'm sick of reading this article. Every forum I've gone on over the last day is now discussing big pharma conspiracy due to this article.

It wasn't ignored. The testing was on mice. MICE. To go from testing on animals to human trials to accepted treatment doesn't take 5 minutes, it takes years, sometimes decades. Plus it's gone to human trials so it's hardly been ignored, covered up in a giant conspiracy, etc.

Plus the article gets simple biology wrong.

In human bodies there is a natural cancer fighting human cell, the mitochondria,


Last time I checked they were located inside of cells and are not cells themselves. If the article got this wrong, what else did it get wrong?


On another forum on which I post someone said that the human trials discovered that the dose needed in humans causes liver damage but they didn't provide a link so I don't know if that's true or not, but it does show that we need to show caution about claiming conspiracy, etc when something works in an animal trial but wasn't instantly used in hospitals worldwide to cure cancer.

A paper reviewing the use of DCA in cancer treatment from 2008 can be found at http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v99/n ... 4554a.html

Abstract

The unique metabolism of most solid tumours (aerobic glycolysis, i.e., Warburg effect) is not only the basis of diagnosing cancer with metabolic imaging but might also be associated with the resistance to apoptosis that characterises cancer. The glycolytic phenotype in cancer appears to be the common denominator of diverse molecular abnormalities in cancer and may be associated with a (potentially reversible) suppression of mitochondrial function. The generic drug dichloroacetate is an orally available small molecule that, by inhibiting the pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase, increases the flux of pyruvate into the mitochondria, promoting glucose oxidation over glycolysis. This reverses the suppressed mitochondrial apoptosis in cancer and results in suppression of tumour growth in vitro and in vivo. Here, we review the scientific and clinical rationale supporting the rapid translation of this promising metabolic modulator in early-phase cancer clinical trials.

Keywords:

mitochondria, metabolism, apoptosis, potassium channels, positron emission tomography, glycolysis

I've been waiting for someone to bring this up. Obviously, I'm not qualified to address the work referenced, but that fucking article itself is pretty shit, as Rome Existed pointed out.

sorry guys. I have zero biology knowledge.

Mononoke wrote:sorry guys. I have zero biology knowledge.

Still better than that ignoramus who wrote the article you referred to.

I read an artilce in New Scientist that used that diagram a couple of years back. Same story more or less. The author of the piece was complaining about harmaceutical companies.

I lolled.

Should big pharma be required to make this drug if it does turn out to work? I'm gonna have to go with no. They're private companies and in the business of making money. If they don't though someone else will and then you'll find big pharma making the drug when they find their treatments aren't selling as well. That's how capitalism works.

Thanks for the comments GenesForLife, the article did seem to be a bit fishy (mitochondria cells, wtf?) so I was suspicious, but it's good to know just what it got wrong and why I shouldn't tell everyone with cancer that they can be magically cured by this drug. This has just come up on FB as well, may I repost your response there? Properly attributed of course

As far as I am concerned, scientists have cured cancer. At least the ones that me and my daughter had.

quisquose wrote:As far as I am concerned, scientists have cured cancer. At least the ones that me and my daughter had.

Yeah, people seem to have a funny notion that cure means some no fuss treatment that is 100% effective. From what I've read most people now survive cancer. Why? Because we have many cures for them. They're not 100% effective, and a lot of the time the cure itself sucks, but they're better than what we had in the past.

PZ haz your back: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/dichloroacetate_and_cancer.php

katja z wrote:Thanks for the comments GenesForLife, the article did seem to be a bit fishy (mitochondria cells, wtf?) so I was suspicious, but it's good to know just what it got wrong and why I shouldn't tell everyone with cancer that they can be magically cured by this drug. This has just come up on FB as well, may I repost your response there? Properly attributed of course

Please do.

Thanks!

Goldenmane wrote:PZ haz your back: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/dichloroacetate_and_cancer.php

And Orac

lordshipmayhem wrote:

Goldenmane wrote:PZ haz your back: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/dichloroacetate_and_cancer.php

And Orac

Ah, I fucking knew there was another one I should be asking about it.

Cheers.