Cure for Cancer?

The times they are a-changin’.

This post seems to be older than 16 years—a long time on the internet. It might be outdated.

Could it really be true. Apparently:

From www.newscientist.com:

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

Wikipedia has more information:

From en.wikipedia.org:

Cancer cells also use glycolysis rather than oxidation, and have defective mitochondria. The body often kills damaged cells by apoptosis, a mechanism of self-destruction that involves mitochondria, but this mechanism fails in cancer cells. Michelakis at the University of Alberta[5] hypothesized that dichloroacetate, by restoring mitochondrial function, may restore apoptosis and kill cancer cells.

There are a couple twists though. First, dichloroacetate is no longer patented. This is good because the cost to produce it would be extremely cheap. But this also comes with a downside, since pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t be making a killing off selling the drug, getting financing for clinical trials might be hard.

Hat tip to Quinn McGinnis for pointing out this report.

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