Medical Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers

[bioquest]

Cheap, "safe" drug kills most cancers

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10971

Shouldn't we be trying to progress with this, get this information out there? Is it as good as it sounds?

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.

 

[mgb_phys]

The problem is usually targeting cancer cells - battery acid and household bleach also kill cancer cells!

Most treatments eg. chemo/radiation target fast growing cells. Cancer cells are fast growing pretty much by definition, unfortunately so are bone marrow.

 

[Moonbear]

This...

DCA can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients

from the article does not suggest "safe."

That suggests some severe neurological side effects.

New Scientist is not a very reliable source of scientific reporting.

 

[scorpa]

The people working on this are actually at my university (woot!) so every once in awhile I hear something about it.

You can take a look at this site to see where things currently stand :

http://www.depmed.uAlberta.ca/dca/