Is this for real, or is it hype?
Good new appears to be it works and the chemical has been in use for 30 years so clinical trials could begin immediately.
Bad news is the pharmaceutical companies won’t pay for any research or trials because they can’t make money off an unpatented medicine.
So, should we get our hopes up?
Ah, I searched the boards for dichloroacetate and didn’t find anything.
It sounds promising and findings have already been published in one cancer journal which puts this leaps and bounds about similar sounding things people drag in here. You can’t really know until some big clinical trials have been done however. You can’t really demonize drug companies for not jumping in to fund expensive clinical trials for something that won’t make them any money. That doesn’t make any more sense than asking the auto makers to fund it IMHO. Actually, drug companies do fund things that they won’t make money on and contribute to basic research that has little hope of short-term profit but this is a little too big and important to just throw at their feet.
Luckily, the U.S. government funds a massive amount of research and they should pitch in right away. The whole show (not even most of it really) is not controlled by the drug companies. The U.S. government gives out grant after grant to study things with less promise than this.
True, if it really is promising, it’ll get funded. Sounds like the sort of thing Bill Gates would be all over.
I was flipping through New Scientist at the bookstore recently and that article definitely caught my eye. I’m planning to keep an eye out for more news about this drug. Just having a new theory about how to attack cancer cells is always a step in the right direction in my view, even though sometimes it takes a long time for those views to become accepted in the research community. For example, I’m reminded of the skepticism that initially greeted Dr. Judah Folkman when he first start presenting his research about how tumors might be killed by blocking their ability to form new blood vessels to feed the tumor (there’s more about his research here if anyone is curious: NOVA Online | Cancer Warrior | Dr. Folkman Speaks)
I’ve always expected that the “war on cancer” will be won in small steps, since different kinds of cancer behave in very different ways and vary wildly in how they respond to different treatments. It would be quite amazing if we do end up with a drug that can attack all kinds of cancer in one fell swoop.
UPDATE:
I just thought I’d point out for anyone who was interested in following the progress of the drug that apparently the Univ of Alberta is now getting involved in raising money to fund clinical trials for it. Their website is here:
http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca
Let’s hope that the hype turns out to be true this time. 
It is being studied.
* Barton HA,
* Bull R,
* Schultz I,
* Andersen ME.
The K.S. Crump Group, Inc., ICF Kaiser, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA. habarton@aol.com
Pharmacokinetic studies with dichloroacetate (DCA) provide insights into the likelihood that trichloroethylene-induced liver cancers arise from formation of DCA as a metabolite and the mode of action by which DCA induces liver cancer. A simple physiologically based pharmacokinetic model was developed to analyze DCA blood concentration data from mice unexposed to or pre-treated with DCA. The large first pass metabolism of DCA in the liver is significantly reduced by DCA pretreatment. Because DCA inhibits its own metabolism, large increases in area under the blood concentration curve occur at lower doses than would be predicted from single-dose pharmacokinetic studies with naive mice. The dose metrics associated with the incidence of liver tumors in contrast to the multiplicity of tumors per animal may be different, suggesting potentially different roles in the cancer process for DCA versus its metabolites. By linking a model for trichloroethylene (TCE) pharmacokinetics with the DCA model, maximum levels of DCA potentially produced from TCE were estimated to be at or below the analytical chemistry detection limits. In addition, the predicted levels of DCA would be too small to produce the observed liver cancers following corn oil gavage exposure of mice to TCE."
That’s the first of over 700 hits on Google Scholar. (which for Google *Scholar *is a lot)
Big Drug may not make much cash off this but the prospect of the Nobel Prize in medicine for one of their researchers plus the huge amount of fantastic good publicity means that they’d be all over it like flies on shit.
No one ignores a potential cancer cure.
The thing about not big drug companies wanting to research it and do a trial is that a doctor doesn’t need them to if he/she wants to prescribe this medication for cancer. IIRC, As long as a medication as FDA approval, a doctor can use their own judgment is what to prescribe it for, as long as the drug companies don’t market it for anything other than FDA approved reasons. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, here.
In a word, no.
The reason is that many drug work in cell cultures, but very few work in people. The cell culture thing is not at all predictive - if it doesn’t work in culture, then it won’t work, BUT if it does work in culture, then there is no guarentee.
It is NOT true that the drug can’t be patented - you can patent the use of the drug in cancer. Very likely the researchers have done this already.
I’m glad to see there’s some additional interest about this here.
The New Scientist article I linked to in the OP has been updated with a note about the “unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers.” It also has a link to a site set up by the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board.
PharmBoy, what about the rats which were deliberately infected with human cancer? Is that the same thing as the drug only working on “cell cultures?”
Sorry to be too redundant, but I wanted to explicitly draw attention to the fact that there is a link on lavenderviolet’s page where we can each donate if we want.
That link is in the New Scientist article now too, but I didn’t want to create the impression I was soliciting donations on anyone’s behalf without a moderator’s approval. I also didn’t want to encourage donations until more knowledgeable Dopers weighed in on the topic and its promise.
I won’t solicit, but I’ll say I’m going to donate. I don’t do monetary charity donation except to the Humane Society. I like to volunteer if I can (Habitat and so forth) but this warrants my hard-earned cash, IMO.
Don’t get your hopes up, folks.
The dichloroacetate (DCA) cancer kerfuffle
Also, more data, reflection, and debate on DCA here: DCA stuff
Pretty much, yes. The problem is, when you move cells into another organism, they weaken, and often lose certain protective cellular components like efflux transporters (which keep the drugs out of the cell). Again, if it works in this model it’s a good sign, but the fat lady ain’t sung yet - there’s a bunch more testing to do.
Needless to say, in this particular case I would ne thrilled to be proven wrong…
PharmBoy, you any relation to Abel PharmBoy?
To be fair, the title of that thread was also spectacularly unhelpful in determining even a molecule of what the actual content was about, so even if it did turn up in a search, you’d have likely missed it anyway.
(Sorry to jump in at this late date for this, but that’s just a HUGE pet peeve of mine.)
Being a newbie, I thought it might be frowned upon to post a link about a new potential cancer cure, and also that it might be met with skepticism or scorn (and when you guys scorn, you do it bigtime) so I just wanted to figure out how to figure out how to get them the funds they needed.
If anyone is still curious, I thought I’d mention I read another article about this drug recently: Doctors prescribe DCA to cancer patients.
Apparently this Toronto clinic has started giving DCA to terminal patients who have exhausted the conventional treatment options.
They claim it seems to help. I’m sure I don’t have to point out that one doctor’s anecdotes means very little compared to a clinical trial, so I definitely still hope the trials can begin soon!