Cure Alveolar Soft Part Sarcoma International (iCureASPS)

The vitamin C clinical trial is being used in conjunction with patients who've had chemo or are currently on some type of specific drug for cancer.

The clinical trials are trying to test if indeed IV vitamin C can be used along with chemotherapy or if it decreases the effect of the chemo .

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/ ... ages/Print


The below taken from the clinical trial

Several studies have been performed to assess the potential synergistic or inhibitory action of vitamin C on certain chemotherapy drugs, with variable results. A series of studies in cell culture and in animals bearing tumors has shown that when given at high concentrations or dosages, dehydroascorbic acid (an oxidized form of vitamin C) can interfere with the cytotoxic effects of several chemotherapy drugs.[18] However, dehydroascorbic acid is generally present only at low concentrations in dietary supplements and fresh foods.



A clinical trial is being conducted at the Kansas University Medical Center here is Kansas.
They are using an integrative medicine approach which allows the patience a whole host of experts, from neurofeedback technicians to doctors of nurtion and nurse practioners, who are all overseeing the patience and study data. All contributing their expert opinions to the trial.

Their creditials can be seen here

http://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/ ... ko-md.html

The University of Kansas med center has this to say

http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/ne ... ting-power

I was looking for an article that explains how vit C acts on a molecular level to those #@$* cancer cells and came up with this article-
Some explanation about the acid like response. Like hydrogine peroxide but in an absorbic acid kind of way ?
Have any of you gargeled with or cleaned a wound with peroxide?
It bubbles and fizzes but taste awlful

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3798917/

The following article gives a question and answer in detail about vitamin C

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/ ... ient/page2

I found this intersting

From the above link-

I would guess that blood work could identify most of the following, however I AM NOT A DOCTOR

Have any side effects or risks been reported from high-dose vitamin C?
Intravenous high-dose ascorbic acid has caused very few side effects in clinical trials. However, high-dose vitamin C may be harmful in patients with certain risk factors.

•In patients with a history of kidney disorders, kidney failure has been reported after ascorbic acid treatment. Patients with a tendency to develop kidney stones should not be treated with high-dose vitamin C.

•Case reports have shown that patients with an inherited disorder called G-6-PD deficiency should not be given high doses of vitamin C, due to the risk of hemolysis (a condition in which red blood cells are destroyed).

•Since vitamin C may make iron more easily absorbed and used by the body, high doses of the vitamin are not recommended for patients with hemochromatosis (a condition in which the body takes up and stores more iron than it needs).

Deb, do you have a link to this clinical trial for vit C? Is Josh on it?
We discussed the things like that before - that there are numerous ideas that something could work for cancer patients in general - but came to a conclusion that unless there is a clinical trial, we can not make any assumptions. It is like with any other treatments - all of them have good rationale based on the logic but when the drugs start to go trough the pipeline of the clinical trials by the phases to find out if the theory works as assumed, many of them do not work and some even bring harm when the cancer develop resistance. There is no reason to believe that vit C or ketogenic diet are different from the proposed cancer treatments and will work as assumed and will not cause the resistance to develop. They too have to be tested. I realize that unless there is a sponsor the testing is slow as clinical trials have to be paid for, but some decent hospitals do test naturally occurred remedies or diets. Especially in the countries with the government sponsored healthcare like Denmark or Sweden. There are some results that published on the Pubmed.
I do not oppose any testing/trying if it is happening in a clinical trial setting in a controlled manner, and if the patient does not loose any other available options, i.e. being enrolled into the appropriate trial when other treatment options are not avail.
So is Josh currently enrolled or is planning to go to vit C clinical trial? If he is, we are very much interested to hear about his experience on it.
As for the ketogenic diet, it is also a very interesting subject - after all the patient has to eat something, so he can choose what to eat and the probability that some of the diets are better than other ones exist.

Hello Olga

Happy Saturday

The link is this
http://www.kumc.edu/Documents/integrati ... COLOGY.pdf

What I understand is that when Josh and his wife ,after extensive research, decided on the vitamin C route they discovered the above clinical trial.
But as you will read of the protocal requirements, you will notice that the client has to of been done with treatments. So we are in an out patient clinic.

The link below

http://www.kumed.com/medical-services/i ... amin-c-faq

The good news is that our Oncologist is on board and looking over Josh via communication , blood work and scans.
We are lucky and blessed to be located a hop, skip and a jump away from a great hospital facility!

D

Deb, I think this is the link to a trial at the ClinicalTrials.gov
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01833351
Identifier:
NCT01833351
Does Josh pay for the vit C or not, i.e. is he on the trial or getting it as a treatment with the help of his oncologist?

Out of pocket

In an out patient setting 2 times a week
And his oncologist is very much in the lope of care.
I'll have him update when able
Debbie

Fact sheet from NIH on vitamin C -

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Vitami ... fessional/

On another note on IV verses oral vitamin C

Taken from the article:

Cancer treatment

During the 1970s, studies by Cameron, Campbell, and Pauling suggested that high-dose vitamin C has beneficial effects on quality of life and survival time in patients with terminal cancer [42,43]. However, some subsequent studies—including a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial by Moertel and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic [44]—did not support these findings. In the Moertel study, patients with advanced colorectal cancer who received 10 g/day vitamin C fared no better than those receiving a placebo. The authors of a 2003 review assessing the effects of vitamin C in patients with advanced cancer concluded that vitamin C confers no significant mortality benefit [39].

Emerging research suggests that the route of vitamin C administration (intravenous vs. oral) could explain the conflicting findings [1,45,46]. Most intervention trials, including the one conducted by Moertel and colleagues, used only oral administration, whereas Cameron and colleagues used a combination of oral and intravenous (IV) administration. Oral administration of vitamin C, even of very large doses, can raise plasma vitamin C concentrations to a maximum of only 220 micromol/L, whereas IV administration can produce plasma concentrations as high as 26,000 micromol/L [46,47]. Concentrations of this magnitude are selectively cytotoxic to tumor cells in vitro [1,66]. Research in mice suggests that pharmacologic doses of IV vitamin C might show promise in treating otherwise difficult-to-treat tumors [48]. A high concentration of vitamin C may act as a pro-oxidant and generate hydrogen peroxide that has selective toxicity toward cancer cells [48-50]. Based on these findings and a few case reports of patients with advanced cancers who had remarkably long survival times following administration of high-dose IV vitamin C, some researchers support reassessment of the use of high-dose IV vitamin C as a drug to treat cancer [3,46,48,51].

Deb, what news? Did you read the review on the link you posted? As I understood from it - "Evidence from most randomized clinical trials suggests that vitamin C supplementation, usually in combination with other micronutrients, does not affect cancer risk" so it is not claimed to have "preventive" role. May be you meant some other article.

Olga wrote:Deb, what news? Did you read the review on the link you posted? As I understood from it - "Evidence from most randomized clinical trials suggests that vitamin C supplementation, usually in combination with other micronutrients, does not affect cancer risk" so it is not claimed to have "preventive" role. May be you meant some other article.

Hi Olga
I corrected the above post--
I linked one thing and read another in my reserach
I will try and come up with the article on fatigue later
Thanks
Debbie

Pharmacologic ascorbic acid concentrations selectively kill cancer cells: Action as a pro-drug to deliver hydrogen peroxide to tissues
Qi Chen,*† Michael Graham Espey,‡ Murali C. Krishna,‡ James B. Mitchell,‡ Christopher P. Corpe,* Garry R. Buettner,§ Emily Shacter,† and Mark Levine*¶

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract.

Human pharmacokinetics data indicate that i.v. ascorbic acid (ascorbate) in pharmacologic concentrations could have an unanticipated role in cancer treatment. Our goals here were to test whether ascorbate killed cancer cells selectively, and if so, to determine mechanisms, using clinically relevant conditions. Cell death in 10 cancer and 4 normal cell types was measured by using 1-h exposures. Normal cells were unaffected by 20 mM ascorbate, whereas 5 cancer lines had EC50 values of <4 mM, a concentration easily achievable i.v. Human lymphoma cells were studied in detail because of their sensitivity to ascorbate (EC50 of 0.5 mM) and suitability for addressing mechanisms. Extracellular but not intracellular ascorbate mediated cell death, which occurred by apoptosis and pyknosis/necrosis. Cell death was independent of metal chelators and absolutely dependent on H2O2 formation. Cell death from H2O2 added to cells was identical to that found when H2O2 was generated by ascorbate treatment. H2O2 generation was dependent on ascorbate concentration, incubation time, and the presence of 0.5-10% serum, and displayed a linear relationship with ascorbate radical formation. Although ascorbate addition to medium generated H2O2, ascorbate addition to blood generated no detectable H2O2 and only trace detectable ascorbate radical. Taken together, these data indicate that ascorbate at concentrations achieved only by i.v. administration may be a pro-drug for formation of H2O2, and that blood can be a delivery system of the pro-drug to tissues. These findings give plausibility to i.v. ascorbic acid in cancer treatment, and have unexpected implications for treatment of infections where H2O2 may be beneficial.

Materials and Methods.

Cells and Reagents. Human Burkitt's lymphoma cells (JLP-119) were obtained and studied as described in ref. 16. Other cell lines were purchased from American Type Culture Collection and were grown at 37°C in 5% CO2/95% air in recommended media containing 10% FBS (GIBCO). Human lymphocytes and monocytes were isolated by apheresis (17) from at least six healthy subjects and used immediately. Ascorbic acid was always buffered to pH 7.0 with sodium hydroxide and prepared immediately before use. Dehydroascorbic acid was freshly prepared (18). 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) was purchased from Molecular Probes and bacto-agar was from Difco. Other reagents, enzymes, and media were from general commercial sources.



The theory to why the IV vitamin c works on just cancer cells not the healthy cells

" It is unknown why ascorbate, via H2O2, killed some cancer cells but not normal cells. There was no correlation with ascorbate-induced cell death and glutathione, catalase activity, or glutathione peroxidase activity. The data here showed that ascorbate initiated H2O2 formation extracellularly, but H2O2 targets could be either intracellular or extracellular, because H2O2 is membrane permeant (38, 52). For example, extracellular H2O2 might target membrane lipids, forming hydroperoxides or reactive intermediates that are quenched or repaired in normal cells but not in sensitive cancer cells. In sensitive but not resistant cancer cells, intracellular H2O2 could target DNA, DNA repair proteins, or mitochondria because of diminished superoxide dismutase activity (53). New insights may follow from future studies of a very broad range of tumor cells or from microarray analysis of resistant and sensitive cells derived from the same genetic lineage."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1224653/