Harvard Scientists Aim To Stop Cancer In Its Tracks

Shuntros writes "BBC News is reporting progress from scientists at Harvard Medical School towards strangling the growth of cancer cells. By starving cells of a certain type of enzyme, growth essentially ceases. 'The fact that proliferating cancer are able to consume glucose at a much higher rate than normal cells was first discovered by the German Nobel prize-winning chemist Otto Warburg more than 75 years ago. He also showed that the amount of glucose the cells needed to keep their vital signs ticking over was minimal, allowing them grow and divide at the prodigious rate usually associated with foetal cells.' Certainly not a cure by any stretch of the imagination, but putting the brakes on cancer growth in this way is very much akin to the revolution that was AZT."

Comments

Wonderful editorial work

[arivanov]

The editors missed the most important fact. This is the enzyme which is actually inhibited by DiChloroAcetic Acid which was recently reported as the Wonder Drug by other groups of scientists. So this discovery already has a matching (though rather nasty) drug which has been shown to work in at least some studies. On top of all the drug is not patent encumbered and you can order it from any large chemical supplier. All that remains is to figure out the therapeutic doze and improve on the drug (DCA does have its side effects).

Re:Wonderful editorial work

[arivanov]

The activity of DCA is simply based upon the Warburg effect, not on the inhibition of this specific variety of pyruvate kinase.

AFAIK the results so far could not be explained by the Warburg effect alone and that was the reason why many scientists questioned the DCA results. So this makes the DCA results doubly interesting.