Cheap Cancer Drug Finally Tested In Humans 363
John Bayko writes "Mentioned on Slashdot a couple of years ago, the drug dichloroacetate (DCA) has finally finished its first clinical trial against brain tumors in humans. Drug companies weren't willing to test a drug they could not patent, so money was raised in the community through donations, auctions, and finally government support, but the study was still limited to five patients. It showed extremely positive results in four of them. This episode raises the question of what happens to all the money donated to Canadian and other cancer societies, and especially the billions spent buying merchandise with little pink ribbons on it, if not to actual cancer research like this."
but... but... (Score:3, Interesting)
what about the magical free market fairies!!!
Re:Cure? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no money in a cure....
That's a common misconception. While there isn't much direct money involved in a cure, the drug companies still come out way ahead. If people don't die (and aren't even sick really) from cancer, they are more likely to buy other products, such as Viagra, that the drug companies are pushing.
couldn't patent? (Score:5, Interesting)
Drug companies can patent just about anything, so long as they do the research and file the patent. Example: a drug called Finasteride 5mg, which treats enlarged prostates, was discovered by its maker, Merck, to stop male pattern baldness. But the patent for Finasteride is expired. Merck did some studies and found that a 1mg dose was enough to treat baldness, and got the 1mg dose (Propecia) approved by the FDA. They patented the 1mg dose and to this day, 1mg Finasteride costs $60/month ($2 per pill), whereas 5mg Finasteride pills (the same drug, different dose) is basically free from generic drug manufacturers.
The moral of the story is that he who does the research gets the patent, even if the chemical itself cannot be patented.
Penn and Teller talked about this on "Bullsh*t" (Score:5, Interesting)
Money spent on e.g. breast cancer awareness goes towards raising awareness of breast cancer, not to finding a cure or even a treatment. It's the same with every other X cancer awareness non-profit charitable organization.
Re:Cure? (Score:3, Interesting)
After reading TFA, it does not appear that this is a cure per se, just that it halts the growth of active tumors. It seems that much more research is needed.
So, where's the Gates Foundation on this one? It seems a perfect avenue for them to do some good for humanity with only a small amount of money spent.
Re:Cure? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yet time and time again, the half-spoken, implicit, veiled theory appears: drug companies don't want to cure diseases, they intentionally avoid developing cures, because that would lose them money. Why?
Probably because it makes sense. Most pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded and their primary obligation is to the shareholders and not to the customers. If you can charge a customer fifty grand for one course of chemo treatment for the rest of his life, then what is the incentive to find a cure? It's the process that makes them money, not the end result.
A tearful story usually follows comments like mine: what about all those wonderfully dedicated researchers working for the pharmaceutical companies day and night searching for the cure? Well, I follow the news, so I am sure I will hear if they actually cure cancer.
Re:Where the money goes (Score:4, Interesting)
Right. Because the selfless, benevolent government officials will be happy about losing their funding (and risk their cushy government jobs), when the cure is found — unlike those evil corporate drones, out to perpetuate our ills for, dare I say it, profit...
Back to the question at hand, the money, obviously, goes to raising awareness. Gee, the easiest question in a week!
Re:Cure? (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually...
I had ALL for two years. Was declared to be cured (I have the record of that in my medical records on dead tree), then when I went in for a blood count check, I'd relapsed with cancer in another organ. So two more years of chemo.
Then...six years after that, I was diagnosed with yet another cancer.
Then 17 years after that, a non-cancerous tumor.
Re:Where else (Score:5, Interesting)
Lack of awareness leads people to assume he's retarded, or a brat, or both.
Autism often goes hand in hand with mental retardation, and it can cause the sufferer to act like a brat. Either way, autism is a mental fault and someone who is autistic or who has an autistic family member cannot expect the autistic person to be treated as if he is any more *special* than someone who just happens to be born, say, with a low-to-average IQ. In other words, "retardation" is also something you are usually born with, and it's no worse to be "assumed" retarded than it is to be "assumed" autistic.
My nephew has Downs and I frequently envy his parents on the simple fact that they don't really need to spend a lot of time explaining how their child is different.
Why does it bother you so much what strangers think? Perhaps you should take a lesson from your son.
Re:Where else (Score:2, Interesting)
My own son gets a mixed result of surprise and disgust when he doesn't live up to the standards his appearance would dictate.
Amen. My best friend from middle school through high school (and beyond if he hadn't have passed on) had Muscular Dystrophy. He was physically retarded, not mentally. Our own wonderful school system even tried to put him in a "special ed" class. Idiots. Every time I hear someone refer to a mentally challenged individual as one of "Jerry's kids" I want to punch them in the face.
So when I donate to MDA, if some of that money goes to educating someone about MD, I'm all for it. It might even keep me out of jail one day.
Awareness is a fair use of of funds. Everyone is NOT as aware as they need to be. If it ever affects you personally.. you'll get it..
P.S. Buy an MDA Shamrock.
Re:Overheads (Score:4, Interesting)
A small medical software startup I once worked at had some extra office space we weren't using, which we donated to a local non-profit doing research to help support policy making on health-related issues.
We were working on folding tables with the cheapest office equipment we could get; they had beautiful wood desks, a huge high-speed copier/fax/scanner, bought (excellent) SNOM VoIP phones compared to the cheapo Grandstreams we were using, and otherwise clearly paid far, far less attention to minimizing their expenses.
Re:Cure? (Score:1, Interesting)
"There is no amount of market manipulation that will make big pharma interested in drugs like this."
End the patent system. The only reason they aren't interested in this drug is because the government is granting them monopolies on other ones, making them far more profitable.
Re:Cure? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course there was an underlying issue(s), but the two cancers I've had and the non malignant tumor all have different underlying issues.
Re:Where the money goes (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically this is a problem with corporations. They have no morals. The law treats them as pseudo-humans, but they are not.
In fact, by most definitions, they are psychotic.
They are incredibly paranoid (with trained attack lawyers), delusional (almost any management meeting), appalling bullies (Microsoft et al), manipulative (marketing, more lawyers), small-minded (the next quarter is the only thing).
Do I need to go on? And yes, drug companies are among the worst - but think of tobacco companies, oil companies ...
Company law needs to change in some way to make incorporated entities be more responsible.
But how?
Re:Where else (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you seen this famous video of where Carly Fleischmann, an autistic girl, learns to communicate? It clearly shows that austism is NOT mental retardation and gives some wonderful insights.
Autistic Girl Expresses Profound Intelligence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq--75v4lI8
-- posting as AC since moderating... Unknown Soldier
Re:Cure? (Score:5, Interesting)
That depends very much on your doctor. I was recently found to be very deficient in Vitamin D. The traditional course of therapy is 50,000IU per week for a month. He could have written out a prescription, but instead wrote out a lab request and attached a Post-It with the words "50K units Vit D/wk." I asked if there was anything special I should look for, and he said, "Just make sure it says 'Vitamin D' on the front of the label." For $8, I got two months' regimen. I need to go back in for testing to make sure that it's recovered, and will be taking 5000 units per week until I can find a better way to get direct sunlight on a regular basis, but that's really it.
One of his colleagues on call a couple of months earlier when I got severe overnight upper-abdominal pains suggested that I could either go to the ER (in case it was appendicitis) or he could write out a prescription for something to tend to the symptoms (in case it was just a really bad gastrointestinal virus or food poisoning). I chose the latter, since the pains were upper abdominal and there was no firmness anywhere in my abdominal area. I had to have someone else get the prescription, as I couldn't drive to the pharmacy, but $60 got 100 tablets of each of the two generic medicines. It took a couple of days to pass, and I lost a good deal of weight, but I didn't have to shell out for the ER plus whatever other charges might have come along with a day or two in the hospital.
Interview your doctors, people. Ask them how they feel about pharmaceutical marketing, and their preferred approaches. Find one that makes you comfortable. Mine is old-school, and would rather his patients tend to themselves than rely on pills, and that's how I prefer to approach it as well.
um, it goes to fund research like this? (Score:4, Interesting)
It really depends on where you send your money, as someone here points out, awareness is not research. Some groups do sponsor research, but it's hard to really do trials without major, major funding.
One thing you can assume that any money you spend on a research oriented charity is only half as effective as you would expect. Most research organizations (universities, national labs - medical research is popular at national labs now) charge ~50% overhead on all grants. That's 50% hopefully going toward facility maintenance, but possibly going to retain administrative "talent." That's after whatever non-profit you donate to takes its operating expenses out.
Ok, so how much do human trials cost? If you raise $100k, that probably won't pay for one trial patient once it's been chopped into little pieces.
This is also why you can get a PhD in microbiology, be an excellent cancer researcher and make less than $30k/year (NIH "minimum" is supposed to be ~$45k at this point by the original law, but they don't even have the resources to support that level themselves and fund the people they want to fund). Once you're allowed to spend money on in-lab expenses, you really try and stretch those dollars. Sometimes you take less money to work on the research you care about (and hope some company, university or non-profit makes it up to you later).
I think it's amazing someone got up to human trials with this drug. It's a marvel of fund raising and organization. Really, very nice.
Re:Cure? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no money in a cure....
That's a common misconception
You've mis-concepted the concept; there's a LOT more money for University medical centers in researching cures than there is in actually finding a cure.
The money for merchandise with pink ribbons should go in a bounty pool. Bounties, rather than never ending research grants, are the way to find hard solutions.
Re:Cure? (Score:1, Interesting)
The skepticism pains me. If could cure cancer with an off-patent drug, I would do it in a hearbeat. The cancer center I work at would want to do this. It would make them more famous and get me promoted. But of course, the overriding reason to do it is that *it is helping people* which is why me and my colleagues chose our line of work!
BTW - as cheap as aspirin is, as an irreversible COX inhibitor, it has higher GI toxicity and bleeding risk that other anti-inflammatory drugs. If aspirin were up for approval today, the FDA would not approve it for anything other than casdiovascular prevention at its lowest dose. There are safer drugs that are just as good. And just as cheap - acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and naprosyn come to mind depending on the scenario.
Viagara is an indicator for CAD (Score:4, Interesting)
Doctors are taking the easy way out and handing out boner pills instead of scheduling tests to see how long is is before the patient goes in for the "last roundup".
Re:Cure? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the real issue is the insurance / liability costs of releasing a drug in the US; we need Tort reform.
Re:Cure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Your argument falls apart when it comes to chemotherapy. That is purely done to cure. The side effects are often much worse then the general discomfort of cancer aside from the finally dieing part. My father finally said no more. He wanted to live his last few months with at least some energy and well being.
Biochemist Zheng Cui’s funding was cut (Score:5, Interesting)
Biochemist Zheng Cui’s had grants and funding while researching cancer, but after he found a very promising approach to fight cancer -- it worked so well that he planed to move to human trials -- all the money dried up. Here is what he said:
There is some private funding and the university put some funding into it. And also, at early stages when we studied the mechanisms of these mice, we had one Mitchell Cancer Institute grant, several small grants from Cancer Research Institute. But they all stopped funding me. It was kind of a strange situation. I thought it was our common goal to come up with a new weapon to fight cancer, but the moment I announced I had a new weapon to test in real human cancer situations, everybody shied away.
Very interesting interview that can be read here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/4273366 [popularmechanics.com]
None dare call it a conspiracy!
Incentives (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can charge a customer fifty grand for one course of chemo treatment for the rest of his life, then what is the incentive to find a cure?
For the people charging the fifty grand probably not much unless their patent protection is about to run out. For everyone else who can charge nothing because they don't have a patented cure of their own there is plenty of incentive. Just because one drug company develops a treatment doesn't mean every other drug company and research institution will suddenly and forevermore stop all research on that topic.
Well, I follow the news, so I am sure I will hear if they actually cure cancer.
"Cure cancer" is a stupid phrase uttered by naive people. That's like saying you're going to "cure viruses" or "fix government". Cancer isn't one disease with a single cause. There never will be a "cure for cancer" because the phrase itself is almost meaningless. Doctors don't even refer to it as cancer [wikipedia.org] amongst themselves. There might be a cure for a neuroblastoma or melanoma (and even those might ultimately refer to categories rather than specific conditions) but the word cancer is too broad to be meaningful in the context of a cure or even a treatment.
DCA worked for me (Score:5, Interesting)
In 2008 I learned I had failed treatment for prostate cancer (72GY radiation & 2.5 years triple hormonal blockade). The disease was metastatic in skeleton and soft tissue with a PSA doubling time of 24 days which is very dangerous. Severe bleeding and bone pain quickly developed. Chemotherapy does not extend survival time for prostate cancer patients, moreover it has serious side effects. There was no clinical trial of DCA for prostate cancer. I decided to self-administer Sodium Dichloroacetate (DCA).
DCA is an orphan drug which for 30+ years has been safely used in the U.S.A. to treat infants born with congenial lactic acidosis; also to treat cerebral ischemia among other conditions, so it is well described in the literature and the side effects are understood. It is not completely benign but is far safer in my opinion than radiation, hormonal blockade or chemotherapy. I had already done my homework and knew to watch for hypoglycemia. I limited my dose to 15mg/kg and took benfotiamine to minimize peripheral neuropathy, R+Lipoic Acid for hepatic support, and arranged regular lab work to monitor liver function.
30 days after initiating DCA the pain in my hips and lower spine ceased. One day unremitting pain, the next day none. 60 days after starting DCA the profuse bleeding from bladder and colon ceased completely. My PSA doubling time dropped from 24 days to 72 months and stabilized.
I developed a little numbness in my toes, which was expected. That is reversible over time. As with many cancer drugs, the evil little cells eventually developed resistance to DCA and I resumed androgen blockade for a time before switching to another self-administered novel treatment. Because of DCA I enjoyed ten wonderful, pain-free months during which I traveled, worked outdoors, got a tan, recovered my strength and my spirits. I have no regrets, not one.
This pattern of temporary remission seems to be a typical experience for early adopters of DCA, although there have been a few reports of complete cures (prostate cancer, sarcoma). About 1,700 patients around the world are currently utilizing DCA as a cancer treatment, off-label. The most organized DCA treatment program is offered by the Medicor Clinic in Canada: http://www.medicorcancer.com/dca-reports.html [medicorcancer.com]
Reading about DCA on the web one encounters venomous hostility to self-administered novel treatments for cancer, and to the use of DCA in particular; sadly, one such source has been quoted today on /. A more appropriate reference might be this op-ed in the New York Times, "Patents Over Patients" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/opinion/01moss.html [nytimes.com]
Whether it is more ethical to allow patients (and their doctors) to utilize an orphan drug off-label, or to tell them they can't utilize a molecule that may extend or even save their lives is a question for another discussion.
Re:Cure? (Score:5, Interesting)
I take 2000 IU a day and generally feel much better.
Re:Cure? (Score:2, Interesting)
I disagree with your conclusion. Although it is correct that Patient dead => won't buy other products, it doesn't follow that Patient alive => will buy other products.
Even though your actual statement was less strict ("more likely to buy"), I still doubt that it would make sense economically to reason that way. You don't invest large amounts with vague expectations for ROI which would - if at all - only occur with a substantial delay. Also, how do you know that the patient is going to buy those other products from you and not from your competitor?
Canadian Cancer Society's perspective on DCA (Score:3, Interesting)
The Canadian Cancer Society [cancer.ca] posted this in August 2008:
"In early 2007, University of Alberta researchers published results of a study about DCA (dichloroacetate) stating that the agent showed promise in shrinking tumours in laboratory rats and human cell lines (human cells grown in a petri dish).
While the results were hopeful, the research was in its earliest stages and had been done on animals only.
The Society has concerns about Canadians with cancer seeking DCA before any clinical trials had been done on humans to test its effectiveness on cancer patients. DCA has been shown to have potentially dangerous side effects when used for non cancer-related conditions.
The Canadian Cancer Society welcomed the news in September 2007 of Health Canada's approval for the first human clinical trial about DCA. This is an important first step in testing this agent for use in cancer patients. We look forward to the results of the trial, which is being led by researchers at the University of Alberta .
Until these clinical trials are finished, we can't advise cancer patients in the general population to use the agent.
Key issues that need to be determined through a clinical trial include:
Is it effective in shrinking tumours?
Can DCA be used safely in cancer patients at doses needed for effectiveness.
Are there critical doses or methods of administration to achieve anti-cancer effects.
The Canadian Cancer Society is currently funding hundreds of other encouraging cancer-fighting research projects."
According to the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:
In a 2005 audit by KPMG, the Canadian Cancer Society reported a revenue of $150,718,000 CAD. A breakdown of disbursements shows 28% of the Society's revenues going to fund research, 17% to provide support for people living with cancer, 7% to pay for information campaigns, 6% to fund prevention, and 2% to provide advocacy. Fundraising consumes 27% of the Society's revenue, and 6% is given over to management costs.