The CTV Health inbox has been filling up with letters from viewers wanting to know if researchers from the University of Alberta really have cured cancer and if they have, why is the mainstream media refusing to cover the story.

These notes appear to derive from a badly written and error-filled article on Hubpages, which is a "freelance content site" (also known as a "content farm") and offers few citations or links, leaving many readers confused.

The article has the nicely sensationalized (and completely erroneous) title of: "Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice"

The article's subhead reads: “Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested” and then begins: “Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV.”

So is it real or bogus?

A bit of both, it would seem.

Strangely, it’s hard to tell how long ago the article was written, but since there are four comments from 4 and 3 years ago, the “last week” bit really should be read as “last week, 2007.” After those comments are dozens and dozens more from the last 3 days or so.

Why the sudden interest in the Hubpages article? Who knows. In one of those head-scratching, unexplainable Internet phenomena, this little article seems to have taken a life of its own in recent days for no discernible reason.

As for the article’s content: Yes, researchers at U of A have been working on a treatment for cancer. The hoped-for treatment is called DCA, or dichloroacetate, and it's a molecule that appears to block glycolysis, which is a mechanism by which most cancer cells gobble up nutrients and generate energy. The researchers, led by Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, have been studying the use of DCA in mice and in patients with brain tumours who have few other treatment options.

What’s been exciting about DCA is that it’s a common compound that has already been used for years to treat children with mitochondrial diseases. But that’s also been the problem: with no patent and therefore no money to be made, it's been hard to fund further research.

But DCA is not a cure for cancer. In fact, it's a long way from being called that, if it ever will be. 

It's also not new. And indeed, mainstream news did cover this research. CTV News’ medical specialist Avis Favaro was one of many who reported on this research four years ago in 2007. Here’s her first piece:

• Small molecule offers hope for cancer treatment

And here’s another piece she did last year when data from a phase 1 clinical trial was published in the Science Translational journal:

• Simple, cheap drug holds cancer treatment promise
  

So have the researchers suddenly perfected the method and cured cancer? Uh, no.

In fact, the last major development is described in that second CTV News report. The U of A team tested DCA on five patients with an advanced form of brain cancer called glioblastoma. They found the compound was safe and also appeared to slow the cancer growth. Here was the American Cancer Society's reaction to that study.

• UPDATE: DCA and the U of A research was also mentioned in this New York Times report back in Nov. 29, 2010, on the overall concept of attacking cancer by cutting off its fuel supply.

But as far as we know, no further studies have been conducted. So why the sudden interest? That’s the head-scratching bit we can’t figure out.

What has happened, notes PZ Myers writes on his Pharyngula blog, is that the story has been "inflaming the conspiracy nuts." (He, too, has been getting lots of emails from people wanting more info.) But as he writes: "There is a germ of truth to the story, in that DCA does have potential."

"...
We should be urging further investigation of this promising drug with the beginning of clinical trials, but it's far too early to be babbling about "cancer cures". There have been lots of drugs that look great in the lab and have excellent rationales for why they should work, but the reality of cancer is that it is complicated and diverse and there are many more pitfalls between a drug that poisons cancer cells in a petri dish and a drug that actually works well in the more complex environment of a human being."

One other factor that inflames the conspiracy nuts over this drug is that DCA is simple, dirt-cheap, and completely unpatentable — there is no economic incentive for a pharmaceutical company to invest a gigantic bucket of money in clinical trials, because there is no hope for a return on the investment.
This is why an independent academic community with research funded for knowledge rather than profit is so important, and really emphasizes why we cannot afford to privatize all biomedical research.

… For this research, we have to turn to public support (they have an interest in better cancer treatments!) and to scientists and doctors themselves, who of course have a great personal interest in seeing their patients get better."

UPDATE 05/18: We asked Dr. Michelakis at UAlberta for his take on the sudden resurgence in interest in his work. He said he thinks it may have derived from a tweet on May 14 from motivational speaker Tony Robbins (who has -- brace yourself -- 1.95 million Twitter followers.)

Michelakis also told us interest in his research has remained steady “because several papers have been published confirming our results with DCA (though in animals). In addition the metabolic theory of cancer is now becoming a really hot subject in oncology.”

“We continue to do our best, but this will never go through if we are the only ones trying to do it. We offered the scientific community the idea -- the initial scientific evidence, the feasibility of doing it in humans -- and now others have to help and do it on their own or in partnership with us.

“At the same time, some continue to take advantage of the DCA stories for profit, including clinics in Toronto run by non-oncologists and non-scientists who give DCA to patients for a large profit, taking advantage of desperate situations.”