A Cancer Cure Sooner Rather Than Later
Cancer Can Be Beaten
The question is will big business whose bottom line is 'making fortunes' help this to happen.
Local Doctor's Research Looks Promising, But Unlikely To Attract Big Investors
By BROOKES MERRITT, EDMONTON SUN
Cancerous tumours can be shrunk without radiation by administering a drug used safely in humans for decades, says a city doctor whose research is creating a major buzz in medical circles.
But because the drug cannot be patented, pharmaceutical companies won't be eager to fund clinical trials to bring it to market, leaving the drug's future in question.
"We've succeeded in reducing tumours with a drug shown to have little side-effects in humans. You could essentially take it as a pill," said University of Alberta researcher Evangelos Michelakis.
The drug is called dichloroacetate, or DCA.
Michelakis, working with several researchers in Edmonton and Ottawa, discovered how DCA can reverse the hallmark weapon of cancer's plague: the sudden ability of abnormal cells to multiply indefinitely, unchecked.
DCA restores a specific function of mitochondria - the mini engines that drive cellular activity.
Mitochondria normally cause unhealthy cells to die off, but that function is suppressed in cancer patients.
"In more than 50 years no one's been able to figure out how to fix mitochondria in cancer patients," said University of Calgary oncology professor Dr. Randy Johnston, who's been studying cancer for 25 years.
"Dr. Michelakis has captured the attention of one of the world's most prestigious medical journals (Cancer Cell), and offers new insight into how cancer is treated."
Finding funding to begin human trials will be difficult.
"Because the drug has no patent it will not attract investors," Michelakis said, adding patents are only issued for novel compounds.
DCA has been used for decades to treat rare metabolic disorders in children, and has long been available from chemical suppliers for mere pennies per dose.
"There's no potential to make billions here, which will discourage pharmaceutical companies from taking up testing," Michelakis said.
"We'll be applying to public agencies."
Clinical human trials can cost pharmaceutical companies between $600 and $800 million to bring a drug to market.
That's close to the annual budget of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which funded Michelakis's DCA lab study.
"We operate on only $700 million per year - we could never invest all of that in a single product, even if it looks as promising as this," said Dr. David Brener, a director with CIHR.
The federal agency is committed to fund research institutions across Canada that "improve quality of life through excellence in health research."
Brener said private sector investment is invaluable in bringing a therapeutic drug to market, but said CIHR has special grants to help researchers when the commercial future of a drug is uncertain, but its therapeutic value has potential.
"It's very important not to jump too quickly," he said.
Michelakis agreed, saying we're likely years away from seeing DCA used as an anti-cancer drug.
Governments of the world should be confronting these pharmaceutical companies and urging them to get behind research of DCA.
Dario Altieri, a professor in the department of cancer biology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass., said the research is "exciting" and that DCA has a lot of potential.
Dr. Altieri said DCA needs to move quickly from the lab into human testing. But he cautioned that there is a real possibility that will not happen, largely for economic reasons.
There is no longer a patent on DCA, meaning it is not owned by any one company. As a result, there is little chance of making a large profit, even if the drug works remarkably well, and hence no incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invest in research.
Dr. Michelakis acknowledged this is a real practical problem, but he expressed hope that public funding bodies like the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (which funded the lab study) will step in.
"Nobody is going to make a billion dollars from this drug," Dr. Michelakis said. "But maybe it will help a lot of people with cancer."
