DCA Update

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From the Official University of Alberta DCA Site

<http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/>:

 

Letter from Dr. Evangelos Michelakis

June 01, 2007

 

Dear Friends,

 

We continue to be moved by your sustained interest and support of our

efforts. We have been working tirelessly over the past several months to

bring this research from the laboratory to the level of a clinical

trial. This is a very challenging endeavor since it is not supported by

the pharmaceutical industry.

The process of bringing a drug from animal research to clinical trial

takes a few years. However over the past 3 months, we have made

significant progress towards achieving our goals. We have received help

and input from stakeholders, medical and otherwise, and have received

input from our health care partners in Alberta to ensure a clinical

trial that can address both efficacy and safety of this potential

treatment. We have significantly revised and improved our original

protocol for Health Canada's consideration. We would like to remind you

that despite the fact that dichloroacetate has been used in humans for

over 20 years the appropriate dose for cancer patients remains unknown.

There are several unique features of a cancer patient, from body

metabolism to a number of unique drugs that only cancer patients are

exposed to, that do not allow extrapolations from other conditions.

Therefore, extra caution has to be exercised regarding the strategy to

identify an optimal dose.

 

More importantly, we would like to remind you that this work, at least

at its early stages, will not be able to be completed without your

ongoing support.

 

Finally, we are very pleased to see that a number of key findings in

scientific literature have surfaced over the past six months and appear

to support a proposed theory and the potential effectiveness of

dichloroacetate or similar drugs as effective therapies for cancer.

Prestigious institutions and journals are now putting our work in

context with these new developments and have expressed guarded optimism

for these efforts. Such a review was recently published at the

prestigious journal " Science " with a title " Metabolic Targeting as an

Anti-cancer Strategy; Dawn of a New Era? " A copy of this paper can be

found in the media section of our website.

 

Sincerely yours,

Evangelos D. Michelakis, MD, FACC, FAHA

Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), Pulmonary Hypertension Program

Canada Research Chair in Pulmonary Hypertension