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Leader and Health

Optimism over cancer treatments should always be cautious

Efforts to turn everyday drugs into cancer treatments bring a glimmer of hope, but dangers of hype too

13 July 2016

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FOR people with cancer, even a glimmer of hope can feel like a beacon in the wilderness.

Almost a decade ago, New Scientist broke a story about dichloroacetate (DCA), a simple chemical used to treat rare metabolic disorders that was also showing remarkable cancer-killing properties. We were inundated with requests for more information – including how to enrol in clinical trials or buy the drug online.

DCA was worth investigating as a cancer treatment, but has yet to live up to its promise. The US Food and Drug Administration eventually had to step in and shut down websites selling it illegally.

This week we run a similar story about repurposing everyday drugs as cancer treatments. Many common-or-garden medications – from painkillers to beta blockers – have shown promise as antitumour agents. A project to systematically investigate their potential as cancer therapies is now under way (see “I help repurpose everyday drugs like aspirin to fight cancer“).

The aims are laudable, but there is also the risk of a DCA-style rush to buy the drugs in question. That is understandable, but not something the project’s leaders advocate. Devising a treatment regime against cancer is a specialist skill, and none of the drugs being investigated have yet passed clinical trials proving their effectiveness against cancer.

The fact that such trials are in the pipeline will be small comfort to people who don’t have the luxury of waiting: clinical trials take a long time. Another huge obstacle is that the drugs are no longer under patent and so wouldn’t turn a profit even if they work. The normal market incentives don’t apply.

Again, the DCA story is instructive. Its clinical trials were funded by public donations. That is one avenue that the drug-repurposing project is pursuing. Another is to change the system to make the drugs easier to get on to the market, and to supply people with information to take to their doctors. For those in search of a glimmer of hope, that is at least something.

This article appeared in print under the headline “New life in old drugs?”

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