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."

Re:Low Carb? No Really.

[siddster]

Not a chance. Fatty acids in the body are broken down by a process called beta-oxidation. The short carbon chains then enter the Krebs cycle (the same cycle used for ATP generation from glucose) and ATP (adenosine triphosphate - the energy currency of the cell) is released.

Re:Wonderful editorial work

[kanweg]

"On top of all the drug is not patent encumbered"

That means that no patient is going to be cured by the drug. Getting a drug to pass all the tests is so expensive, that no drug company is going to do that without patent protection for the drug. It is only then that they can earn their money back (and make a profit) .

Only if the government is going to step in and provide the funds does it give patients a chance.

Bert

Re:Wonderful editorial work

[kesuki]

however, approval for use as a 'dietary supplement' is far, far, far more lax. After all, stevia was approved as a 'dietary supplement' years and years before coke/cargil got in on the game...

sold as a real medicine, not likely, but someone could probably get it approved as a dietary supplement with some 'fancy trade mark name' in however long it takes to get the paperwork through... and the websites touting it's use for blah blah blah, and how much to use etc...

since the cost and turn around times are lower, a company could be making money on this in a very short while. it also gives countries with even more lax laws the ability to market this stuff directly as an anti-cancer treatment. many of those countries have no 'affordable' cancer drugs, so this could be the third worlds cancer drug of choice by next week.

Re:Wonderful editorial work

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure every Slashdotter who posts here believes the pharmaceutical industry's lies that 'HIV is the cause of AIDS', and would rather (literally) die, than read an alternative hypothesis...

I've been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and even to me you look nuts. Seek Help

Re:Low Carb? No Really.

[siddster]

Cancer typically kills older people. In large swathes of the developing world, as life expectancy increases, cancer starts to become a major issue. But that doesn't in itself mean that the diet caused it. Just that people are now living long enough to get the disease. Correlation does NOT equal causation.