New development about dichloroacetate (DCA)

[Maia]

I'm so glad to report new developments about dichloroacetate (DCA), a quite inexpensive and researched (since years ago, for congenital lactic acidosis) drug. It's something I've considered promising since time ago (posted a little reference here). DCA restores mitochondrial function, damaged in cancer cells, thus restoring the possibility of apoptosis for those cells: it allows cancer cells to self-destruct and therefore shrink the tumor.

The news:

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April 16, 2014 Medical XPress http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-04-d ... tment.html

Researchers develop new dichloroacetate formulation for cancer treatment

Health forums were abuzz in 2007 with news that a simple, inexpensive chemical may serve as a viable treatment to many forms of cancer. The drug dichloroacetate, or DCA, was touted as a cure-all, but after years of work, scientists are still searching for ways to make the unique treatment as effective as possible.

Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered a new way to deliver this drug that may one day make it a viable treatment for numerous forms of cancer. They published their findings in the American Chemical Society's journal ACS Chemical Biology.

"DCA shows great promise as a potential cancer treatment, but the drug doesn't find and attack cancer cells very efficiently in the doses researchers are testing," said Shanta Dhar, an assistant professor of chemistry in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "We have developed a new compound based on DCA that is three orders of magnitude more potent than standard treatments."

Every cell in the body needs energy to divide and grow, and most of them do this by breaking down sugar. When cells misbehave, they are normally deprived of their food and die in a process called apoptosis.

Cancerous cells, however, find a way around the natural order by discovering other sources of energy. Dhar's technology, which she calls Mito-DCA, destroys the cancer by focusing on a part of the cell called mitochondria, commonly known as the powerhouse of cells because they generate most of the cell's chemical energy.

"By targeting the mitochondria, we can force cancerous cells to die just as regular malfunctioning cells would," said Dhar, who is part of the UGA Cancer Center. "But the drug we have developed affects only cancerous cells, leaving normal cells undisturbed."

In their experiments, Dhar and her research team exposed cancer cells to Mito-DCA. The results showed that the engineered chemical substance was able to switch the glycolysis-based metabolism of cancer cells to glucose oxidation, meaning that the cancer cells can once again die via apoptosis.

Mito-DCA also suppressed the production of lactic acid in cancerous cells, which allows them to avoid detection by the body's immune system. With this cloaking device damaged, the body's own T-cells are better able to recognize tumors and eliminate them.

While the UGA researchers' model focused specifically on prostate cancer, Dhar is hopeful that their technique may prove useful for other forms of cancer.

"This is only the beginning of this project," she said. "We will continue to test Mito-DCA and find new avenues for treatment."
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The abstract: Mito-DCA: A Mitochondria Targeted Molecular Scaffold for Efficacious Delivery of Metabolic Modulator Dichloroacetate
Full article: here

Edited to share a folder on my Google Drive, with everything I have about DCA, since 2010: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

[skypup]

Maia, you amazing woman! This sounds exciting. Any clinical trials you know of?

mmmmwah!

[Maia]

There are -but recruiting, at the moment, only for head-neck cancer (one of them: http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01163487). Some finalized and other ongoing, not recruting, for glioblastoma and other brain tumours.
And one ongoing for solid tumours, but not recruiting, at the University of Alberta, Canada, where all this started: A Phase I, Open-Labeled, Single-Arm, Dose Escalation, Clinical and Pharmacology Study of Dichloroacetate (DCA) in Patients With Recurrent and/or Metastatic Solid Tumours
Never posted because it's such a little trial, in Canada. I've emailed with the researchers, a couple of years ago -told me they are two persons, and don't have funds and are barely able to answer emails. Maybe that changed...

[ColOrPan]

Great job Maia, thanks for posting.

[lichens]

It sounds like the experiments they have done so far are still in vitro, so I would expect any clinical trial using this newly created compound base on DCA to be at least a few years away.

[Maia]

It sounds like the experiments they have done so far are still in vitro

No, there are results from in vivo (mice) and humans. Take a look at the folder shared in the first post, or let me know if you need more specific directions : )
The trials I've mentioned as reply to Theresa definitely are using 'just' DCA, the substance (not this novel Mito-DCA).

There, I've shared the folder. It's messy but, if I try to put some order there (changing some cryptic names of files/articles to something more descriptive, for example), I won't never share them, I'm afraid LOL
There is, yes, a folder called "DCA+colorectal" with articles specific for that, and other called "Michelakis" (the original researcher about this, from University of Alberta Canada), with the articles authored by him.
About the rest... assorted material, just help yourselves.
I'd like to bring to your attention the following. The world authority about this substance (dichloroacetate, DCA) is Dr Peter W. Stacpoole, from the University of Florida. He has pioneered the work with it for the treatment in children with a metabolic condition -congenital lactic acidosis. So he 'knows' this substance since like 20 years ago, or more, I don't remember now. Thing is, the *anticancer* action of this was 'discovered', apparently, by Dr Evangelos Michelakis (U of A), starting in 2006. There was media hype, etc.
But you can say this is promising because, apparently from that moment on, University of Florida started to work on DCA as anticancer agent.
Since it's a substance, the only way to get a patent over it is to add something to it -a way to deliver it 'more efficiently' (like the Mito-DCA, this month, from the University of Georgia), or sell a test to determine who may benefit better from this treatment, with less toxicity, etc. This last is what the University of Florida has been doing. You will find in this folder I've shared a call to investors "The University of Florida is seeking companies interested in commercializing a breakthrough approach to treating cancer that is efficacious but has limited side effects". I have this since May 2012, maybe it's from before that. Also, they seek investors for a Test Kit for Dosage Determination For Safer Administration Of Dichloroacetate
Take a look at that folder, there is more about all that.

What I'm trying to say is that serious researchers evidently think that DCA has potential (and you can see it is and has been in clinical trials). The bad thing is that there was media hype about this, then faded away; in the middle, you had a lot of people buying DCA over the internet, from different sources of dubious seriousness; there was even an scandal about a young man selling talc powder instead of DCA to cancer patients. All that it is true, but it shouldn't prevent anyone from keeping an eye on this.
An old interview with Dr Michelakis (media hype included): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tLI59smADg
An also old conference about DCA for glioblastoma, at the University of Alberta.:
Generic drug may be potential treatment for deadly brain cancer: Part 1 Part 2