The End of Cancer. DCA makes its world debut.

Canadian Researchers Find Long-Awaited Cure using “Dichloroacetate”

By Prachi Kamble, Staff Writer

No hoaxes, no rumours, this is the real deal. Researchers at the University of Alberta’s Department of Medicine have discovered a simple and inexpensive drug that is proven to kill cancer cells.

This drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), changes the metabolism of cancer cells and causes them to age and die, a feat that is alien to cancer cells and stops them from otherwise destroying the human body.

Dr.Michelakis and his team at the University of Alberta have been heavily researching the effects of DCA on non-human models since 2007. The team published its findings in that year and since then has proceeded to prove the success of DCA on human cancer cell samples and recently on actual human subjects.

Michelakis’ project is in dire need of funding at this very crucial stage of the research, as the majority of the breakthrough has already been unearthed. Fine-tuning on the findings—such as making the drug safe on all human recipients, as well as scoring out the side effects of the drug—still needs to be done.

With adequate funding and media attention, Michelakis’ cancer curing team may well accomplish what the twenty-first century had thought was impossible: an end to the baffling and invincible disease that is cancer.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada. Cancer.org cites that “[a]n estimated 177,800 new cases of cancer … and 75,000 deaths from cancer will occur in Canada in 2011.” The organization also states in their recent findings of 2011 that 40% of women and 45% of men in Canada will develop cancer during their lifetimes.

For the Canadian population that is headed for these horrifying numbers, as well as for the entire global population, the discovery of DCA effect on cancer represents a wave of concrete and substantial hope.

An article on hubpages.com outlines the intricacies of University of Alberta’s cancer curing project. The article has recently been doing the rounds on the Internet and has brought to the mainstream the prolific medical discovery that could change the face of medicine in the coming years.

But what some feel is discouraging is the minimal attention pharmaceutical and major media entities are paying to this discovery. Some believe this is due to the patent-less status of DCA, which means there is virtually no profit for pharmaceutical companies in the area.

If DCA becomes successful in the cure for cancer, it may eliminate the plethora of chemotherapy drugs that rake in millions for pharmaceutical companies each year.

The NY Times article titled “Incentives Limit Any Savings in Treating Cancer” exposes the millions of dollars that pharmaceutical companies and doctors make solely from the sale of chemotherapy and other cancer-alleviating drugs. Berenson observes that “the[se] drugs range from relatively inexpensive treatments like Taxol, a breast cancer drug that costs about $150 a dose, to a new wave of biotechnology therapies like Avastin, a drug for colon and lung cancer that can cost as much as $8,800 a month.”

These numbers multiplied by the hundreds of thousands of cancer cases across North America spell big numbers, which the pharmaceutical industry is no doubt afraid of losing to the widespread adoption of DCA.

DCA is no stranger to the medical field as it has been commonly used to treat metabolic disorders. The figure below outlines the mode of DCA’s cancer-cell destruction process.

(Click on the image below to enlarge.)

Human cells are powered by the king of all its organelles – the mitochondrion. A host of mitochondria together provide every human cell with energy for all of the processes necessary for life.

Mitochondria however are also ironically responsible for cell aging and ultimately cell death. Cancer cells are able to skip the functions of the mitochondria by exploiting glycolysis as their mode of energy production, which unlike the mitochondria does not use oxygen in its energy-releasing glucose breakdown.

The result is not only the avoidance of cell aging and cell death by snubbing the mitochondria, but the cancer cells also acquire the corrosive ability of lactic acid (a by-product of glycolysis), that helps them eat through tissue and take over the human body at an even more alarming rate.

As outlined in the image above, the DCA reactivates the dormant mitochondria in cancer cells, so that the cancer cells age and eventually die like all other cells.

The DCA’s mode of operation is basically just that simple.

And just as simple would be its availability and cost if it were perfected and introduced in the medical field as soon as possible. According to the University of Alberta, tumour cells extracted from forty-nine brain tumour patients were subjected to DCA treatments and these tumours showed remarkable and desirable changes in their metabolism.

The research team also gave the DCA treatment to five patients whose tumours regressed over three months or at the very least remained constant in size while exhibiting no signs of growth.

The lack of media attention to this century’s eureka moment is startling and begs to be remedied. To the millions of cancer patients worldwide and their grieving families, Dr. Michelakis’ research breathes new and unprecedented hope into a bleak future.

With adequate funding and social awareness the DCA project could well put a close to the leading cause of death in North America. On the other hand, if DCA is not the rosy solution to cancer (as many critics believe it not to be), the research related to DCA may spur other cancer-research groups to pursue the end of cancer with greater vigour.

Either way, the end of cancer appears nearer than it did a decade ago and it is about time scientists and medical teams alike made cancer old news.

First published in May 22, 2011

ARB Team
Arbitrage Magazine
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