cancer
oracknows | April 11, 2007It's been a couple of weeks since we last checked in with The DCA Site, that dubious advertising site for BuyDCA.com, where a chemist named Jim Tassano sells to desperate cancer patients non-pharmaceutical grade and non-FDA-approved dichloroacetate, the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent with an interesting and unusual mechanism of action that has shown promise in rat models of cancer but as yet has not undergone clinical trials in humans to determine if it is effective in cancer. Based on a lot of hype by the credulous and proudly ignorant, a lot of distrust of big pharma (some justified…
grrlscientist | April 10, 2007tags: dog breeds, IGF1, insulin-like growth factor 1, cancer, growth disorders
One gene mutation makes all the difference in body size between a big dog and a little dog.
Image: NY Times.
There are several things that I think are amazing about dogs, Canis familiaris. First, there is a huge discrepancy in body size between different breeds -- greater than for any other mammal, in fact, and second, these vastly different dog breeds still recognize each other as being of the same species. Yet, according to a recently published research paper, this huge differential in the body size of dogs…
oracknows | April 10, 2007It figures. On the very day that I posted a rather long post about a series of three papers discussing the use of mammography and MRI for screening women for breast cancer, there would have to be another paper relevant to the topic of the early detection of cancer, again in this case breast cancer. This one didn't get as much play in the media, but it fits in very well with the primary messages of Part 1 and Part 2 of this series: that earlier detection is not necessarily better. This study, however, has a bit of a twist.
Now, despite the general tone of my commentary implying that newer,…
terrasig | April 6, 2007...my attention was raised to another mitochondrial glycolysis inhibitor being touted for anticancer utility. From a 1 April New York Times Op-Ed by Ralph W. Moss entitled, "Patents Over Patients":
In 2004, Johns Hopkins researchers discovered that an off-the-shelf compound called 3-bromopyruvate could arrest the growth of liver cancer in rats. The results were dramatic; moreover, the investigators estimated that the cost to treat patients would be around 70 cents per day. Yet, three years later, no major drug company has shown interest in developing this drug for human use.
I don't know…
oracknows | April 5, 2007An "integrative" medical practitioner observes:
I just came from a lecture by a Chinese Prof. who has a cancer hospital in China (Fuda Cancer hospital). What is strange, was it didn't use therapies from China, but rather technologies from the USA. They have cryoablation, photodynamic therapies, dendritic cell therapies, immunotherapy as well as chemoablation.
They claimed to have a very good success rate in increasing survival. Patients from all over have come to this hospital in Guangzhuo.
Why is he surprised?
As I've pointed out before, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is losing out to…
oracknows | April 5, 2007[Note: If you haven't already, you should read PART 1 of this two-part series. It defines several terms that I will be using in this post, and I don't plan on explaining them again, given that they were explained in detail in Part 1. Of course, if you're a medical professional and already know what lead time bias, length bias, and stage migration are, then you should still read Part 1 for its scintillating writing.]
I hadn't expected that it would take me this long to get around to part 2 of my post from Monday, but, alas, other matters intervened. Better late than never, and besides, we…
oracknows | April 2, 2007In the course of a few days last week, two prominent political personalities from different parties, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, announced that their cancers (breast cancer in the case of Edwards and colon cancer in the case of Snow), after having apparently been successfully treated two years ago had recurred and were now metastatic. One of the issues that comes up whenever famous people announce that they have cancer is the question of early detection and why we don't detect tumors earlier. Indeed, Amy…
oracknows | March 30, 2007It is with some trepidation that I approach the latest target of Your Friday Dose of Woo.
No, it's not because the woo is so potent that it has actually struck the fear of You-Know-Who in me (I leave it up to readers to determine whether I was referring to God or Valdemort), although it is indeed potent woo. Nor is it that the woo is boring woo (there's a reason why "power of prayer" kind of woo usually doesn't make it into YFDoW unless there's a really entertaining angle to be targeted). No, it's because this particular woo seems to combine genetics with systems biology (I kid you not),…
oracknows | March 28, 2007It's been a week since I last wrote about dichloroacetate (DCA), the chemotherapeutic agent that targets tumor cells by an interesting new mechanism based on the Warburg effect, as I've described in the past. After a very interesting article in Cancer Cell in January by investigators at the University of Alberta, the blogosphere erupted with wild speculation that this was a "cure" for cancer, based only on animal studies that were fairly impressive. Because DCA is a small molecule that is supposedly "unpatentable," pharmaceutical companies have been rather cool in their interest, and it is…
oracknows | March 28, 2007It's been a bad few days.
A mere four days after Elizabeth Edwards announced that her breast cancer had recurred in her rib, with an update the other day saying that the apparently was also another lesion in in her hip, I learn from a commenter and multiple other sources that White House Press Secretary Tony Snow has suffered a recurrence of his colon cancer. Apparently, it has spread to the liver:
CBS/AP) Presidential spokesman Tony Snow's cancer has returned and spread to his liver and elsewhere in his body, shaken White House colleagues announced Tuesday. They said he told them he planned…
oracknows | March 27, 2007I realize that being in academic medicine at a tertiary care center often produces the "ivory tower" syndrome, but occasionally it is brought home to me that the way we practice surgery here often differs considerably from how surgery is practiced "in the trenches." This time around, it was a study about how often surgeons referred women whose breast cancers are large enough to require a mastectomy to treat to plastic surgeons for a discussion of reconstruction options prior to the mastectomy. The answer was: Not nearly often enough. See for yourself:
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Forty-four percent of…
oracknows | March 26, 2007There hasn't been much news in the last two or three months about Abraham Cherrix, the 16-year-old with Hodgkin's lymphoma who rejected conventional chemotherapy, first in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy and then for the ministrations of a radiation oncologist in Mississippi named Dr. Arnold Smith, who combines non-woo (low dose radiation therapy) with woo (a form of "immunotherapy" involving "belly plaques" that has no evidence showing efficacy, not "more innovative techniques, such as immunotherapy, which uses medications and supplements to boost the immune system," as the…
terrasig | March 23, 2007For your Saturday morning reading pleasure, here are two articles following up on my dichloroacetate (DCA) and bogus internet pharmacy death posts this week. Each was recommended by my clandestine operative from the Great White North, PharmCanuck:
Canadian cancer society warns of untested drug
Heather Logan, the director of cancer control policy at the society who trained as a nurse, has worked with people fighting to prolong their lives. Logan said she sympathizes with those who are buying the drug and mixing it at home as a last resort, but stresses there are serious safety concerns.
"The…
oracknows | March 22, 2007As odd as it seems, my timing in posting about removing chemotherapy ports yesterday was eerily coincidental.
I've alluded to this before, but I'm most definitely not a big fan of John Edwards and would never vote for him for President. That being said, I can't help but feel for him and, even more so, his wife Elizabeth, given their announcement today that Elizabeth's breast cancer has recurred (see here as well), with a biopsy proving that it has metastasized to a rib. Neither she nor he nor their family deserve this, nor does any patient with cancer. I've gotten a few e-mails asking what…
oracknows | March 22, 2007[Note: The following is based on an aggregation of multiple patients. It does not represent any single patient's case.]
It was a little case.
I know, I know, I've said in the past that there's no such thing as a little operation, at least not when it's happening to you, and that's true. Nonetheless this case was as close to "minor surgery" as you could get while still actually having to wield a scalpel to cut through skin. As I spoke to her before the operation to get informed consent, the patient ran her fingers across her short hair, only now starting to grow back after her having completed…
oracknows | March 21, 2007Late yesterday afternoon, I was lazily checking my referral logs to see who might be linking to Respectful Insolenceâ¢, as most bloggers like to do from time to time (and any blogger who claims otherwise is probably feeding you a line), when I noticed a fairly large number of visits coming from one location, namely here. I was wondering when this would happen, but it looks as though the regulars at The DCA Site have finally noticed some of my writing. Surprisingly, what they say about me is not that bad, although that's probably because they seem to have found the least--shall we say?--…
oracknows | March 20, 2007Although I've been blogging alot about dichloroacetate, the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent that has shown promise against a variety of cancers in preclinical animal tumor models, but I'm not the only one. Fellow ScienceBlogger Abel Pharmboy, whose knowledge of pharmacology surpasses my own, has also been on the case and has produced some articles worth checking out:
The dichloroacetate (DCA) cancer kerfuffle
Where to buy dichloroacetate...
Local look at dichloroacetate (DCA) hysteria
Edmonton pharmacist asked to stop selling dichloroacetate (DCA)
Four days, four dichloroacetate (DCA)…
terrasig | March 19, 2007My blog buddy Orac at Respectful Insolence has a superb post today following up on his continuous coverage of dichloroacetate and two posts I had recently on local coverage in the Edmonton Journal of this unapproved, experimental compound. As an oncologic surgeon, he provides an authoritative rebuttal to the argument that there's no harm in buying DCA for self-medication by cancer patients whom medicine can no longer help.
As hard as it may be to believe, even if you have a terminal illness with only months to live, things can get worse. One thing worse than dying of cancer is hastening your…
oracknows | March 19, 2007It figures.
Whenever I go away for a conference, things of interest to me that I'd like to blog about start happening fast and furious. Indeed, I could only deal with one of them, and I chose to post my challenge to the Paleyist "intelligent design" creationist surgeon, Dr. William Egnor. Now that I'm back, I'll deal with the other major issue that's been a frequent topic of blogging over the last couple of months and bubbled up again into the blogosphere over the weekend.
Remember all the posts that I did on dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent that targets the…
terrasig | March 17, 2007From the same reporter at the Edmonton Journal who brought us yesterday's DCA article comes news of a highly-experienced Canadian pharmacist who has been providing patients with physician-prescribed dichloroacetate. Jodie Sinnema reports that a local pharmacist has been selling DCA to patients but their supplier has stopped providing the pharmacy with the compound after intervention by Health Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the US FDA.
Ron Marcinkoski, a pharmacist at Market Drugs Medical at 97th Street and 102nd Avenue, said he was doing what he could to help cancer patients when…