I have been listening to podcasts at work when I don’t need all of my mental attention, and I have found a particularly interesting one, Futures in Biotech it explores the current innovations in biology, mostly by interviewing leading scientists.

One episode that I found particularly interesting recently was an interview with Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, whose team has been working on new treatments for pulmonary hypertension. During their work they came upon a possible treatment for cancer.

One of the best ways in which cancer is diagnosed is that it turns off the mitochondria in the cell, which are responsible for cell respiration (energy generation) and for apoptosis (apoptosis is the process of regulated cell death) Since cancer turns off the mitochondria it is not subject to regulation by apoptosis, which then allows the cancer cells to grow unchecked. Dr. Michelakis and team where studying the processes of cell metabolism as it relates to hypertension and formed the hypothesis that the mitochondria being turned off was not a byproduct of cancer, but that it had a more formative function in cancer’s pathology. So that if one turned the mitochondria back on, one would not only restore cell respiration, but could restart apoptosis, which would kill the cancer cells. Upon investigation they found that cancerous cells produce an enzyme which turns off the mitochondria, and found that DCA (Dichloroacetic acid, which has been used for some time in humans to treat certain metabolic disorders) is a counter to this enzyme. So that in their tests using rats, when a rat without an immune system is injected with human cancer cells, and the cancer begin to grow, the growth can be stopped and reversed by giving DCA in the rats drinking water. Dr Michelakis tried to interest the pharmaceutical companies in further testing of DCA in the treatment of cancer, but as DCA is not patentable, the companies where not interested. So he has begun gathering public financial support to put the drug through phase I and II trails, with a phase I trail beginning in Canada last September.

Some interesting links:
Dr Michelakis’s Website
Futures in Biotech Episode 21
Wikipedia Article on DCA
Dr Michelakis and teams original paper