U of A study finds potential cancer drug

EDMONTON (CUP) — A University of Alberta research team has successfully shown that a generic drug can alter the metabolism of cells and may be a potential treatment for a type of brain cancer called glioblastoma.

On May 12, the team, led by medicine professors Evangelos Michelakis and Kenn Petruk, published a paper in Science Translational Medicine containing the results of their clinical trial on the effects of dichloroacetate acid (DCA) - a drug typically used to treat a build-up of lactic acid - on glioblastoma cancer cells. Graduate students Peter Dromparis and Gopi Sutendra are also part of the team.

Dromparis explained that DCA alters the metabolism of cancer cells by affecting their mitochondria. Part of the normal function of mitochondria is cell death or apoptosis, a process in which a cell essentially kills itself if conditions aren't favourable.

However, mitochondria within cancer cells do not function normally. Apoptosis shuts down, and as Dromparis stated, the cells become “almost immortal.”

DCA serves to reactivate the mitochondria, meaning that their original functions, including apoptosis, are restored, which has the potential to shrink a tumour's size.

Michelakis published his initial findings in 2007, concluding that DCA was effective in reactivating mitochondria in test tubes and in animals, but there was no evidence that this would be the same case in humans.

However, with the results of their recent clinical trial, Michelakis' team has shown that DCA will work the same in the human body as observed in their previous studies.

The first part of the trial included analyzing the effects of DCA on the tissue of glioblastomas, extracted from 49 patients.

“We take these little pieces of tissue in the test tube, we give them DCA acutely and we see how the mitochondrial activity changes. Essentially, what we've shown is that DCA causes mitochondrial activation and this is consistent with what we have seen in our animal models and in the test tube,” Dromparis said.

The second part of the trial was the treatment of five patients with glioblastoma. The researchers obtained tissue prior to DCA treatment, which offered insight into the drug's effects.

“We were able to compare, within the tumour tissue, different molecular characteristics,” Dromparis said. “DCA was doing in people, when taken orally, exactly what it was doing in animals.”

Dromparis stressed that people can react differently to drugs in different conditions and that this study does not guarantee DCA's safety.

“This study here is very small and only done with five patients. Now unfortunately, that's not enough to make any claims about DCA's safety or DCA's ability to kill cancer. What it does give us is an idea of what's happening molecularly,” he said.

However, Dromparis did say that the results are encouraging, but that there is more work to be done.

“This is quite encouraging, because what happens in a test tube and what happens in a human body are often very different things. But this is a study showing that DCA can metabolically modulate human cancers, particularly glioblastoma.”

The next step for the team is to complete larger phase trials to help ascertain the safety of DCA and its efficiency at killing cancer cells in people.