insulin Potentiating Therapy:
This therapy of using insulin to make the BC active just prior to chemo, which could reduce the amount of chemo necessary up to 90% sounded very interesting. This is not a new idea. Has anyone ever heard of it? If this would reduce chemo costs, and reduce the damage to healthy cells, why are we not hearing about it outside of alternative clinics?
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Do you know of any trials of this therapy, or are they just saying it won't work and not bothering to have trials?
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Shouldn't this be posted in the Alternative forum rather than Stage IV?
You can google as well as I can.
Here is a line in wikipedia stating that the doctors advocating this treatment won't do the research:
In 2000, the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Advisory Panel on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAPCAM) invited Drs. Perez Garcia and Ayre to present IPT to them as part of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Best Case Series program. However CAPCAM have not in the time since undertaken any further research into IPT
Here is what the ACS has to say, and it mentions a small trial.
The first link I posted stated several misconceptions about the way cancer grows that would lead researchers not to find this a valid treatment to pursue.
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Am I wrong, or does the Block Center in Illinois do IPT? I might be wrong, but I seem to remember something along those lines.
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The one in the video is in NY.
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This absolutely belongs on a different forum - I just PM'd the mods about it.
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Kitty do you want to pursue this therapy? That's up to you but I think you got the answer as to why you don't hear of it outside alternative clinics. The proponents have not subjected their theory to verifiable testing and peer review.
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In vitro, in vivo and phase 1 studies are for new drugs. For existing drugs used in a different way they can go straight to phase 2 and 3 human trials as far as I know.
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kittykitty, are you a breast cancer patient - or what is your relationship, if any, to one? Just curious. If you have answered that elsewhere I apologize.
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I had my TAC chemo at the Block Center. They do not do IPT and are I guess what you would call integrative not alternative.
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I found a trial for this done in 2004, from a scientific research search engine I have access to, and I tried to post it last night, but.... whatever. This topic interests me as regards the insulin receptor in BC, and how it might be used in treatment.
I am aware that this topic has been kicked around in past years, and that the "mainstream" seems to be very hard pressed to commit resources to exploring the topic of blood sugar/insulin//metformin and BC. The current metformin trial should have been done years ago, and there is no reasonable excuse that ASCO did not see that done, years ago. I guess not enough profit to interest anyone in studying the insulin receptor in BC? This subject interested me as another angle by which to look at the relationship of BC and insulin.
My interest in this topic is only as relates to insulin and BC, and what effect insulin and sugar have on BC.
Especially interesting is the fact that one of the pathways moderated by Afinitor is insulin. How much of what Afinitor is supposed to be doing is related to the insulin pathway, and how much is related to other pathways like growth factor? The fact that the mainstream can invest millions in Afinitor, but has to have its arm twisted off to get a study going on metformin says a lot about the state of research. The price tag and profit margin on Afinitor might have something to do with the "mainstream's" interest in Afinitor, and lack of interest in metformin, and conversely, insulin?
Tying back to this "alternative treatment" , if the insulin pathway is relevant to BC, and if metformin is being studied as possibly helpful as an inhibitor, why would it not make sense to further study the properties of insulin as regards amplifying chemo treatments? Of course there is no money in that for the "mainstream." Oh, well.
There has been next to no interest from the "mainstream" on the insulin receptor in BC, people.
Take your heads out of the sand, and ask why not.
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The metformin trial was being done years ago. I participated starting in 2009 at MD Anderson. At that time I was progression free for 18 months when it moved to my liver. That was the longest success they had at the time. Dr Francisco Esteva was the trial coordinator.
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I have read up extensively on IPT and before I would do any kind of conventional chemo, I would give this a try first. I'm speaking for myself only, based on my feelings about conventional chemo. Everyone has to make their own decision based on their individual needs. These alternative treatments are out there if one is willing to take a risk and participate. There are no guarantees with either alternative or conventional treatments, and unfortunately, here in the USA, the alternate treatments are not covered by insurance.
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If the US can put a man on the moon in 1969, but it takes until 2009 or thereabouts to get some scientist interested in the insulin receptor, and its relevance to BC,== I rest my case.
I read many posts of people asking their oncologist for a prescripton for metformin for BC, who are rebuffed, as "it has not been proven to be effective yet"....(?).
Seems kind of late to me to be still wondering about insulin and metformin, I think we should have a definitive answer one way of another at this point in the game.
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If the US can put a man on the moon in 1969, but it takes until 2009 or thereabouts to get some scientist interested in the insulin receptor, and its relevance to BC,== I rest my case
Why haven't we cured cancer yet?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we cure cancer?
If we can harness the atom, why can't we cure cancer?
How many times have you heard these questions, or variants thereof? How many times have you asked this question yourself? Sometimes, I even ask this question myself. Saturday was the two year anniversary of the death of my mother-in-law from a particularly nasty form of breast cancer, and, even though I am a breast cancer surgeon, I still wonder why there was nothing in the armamentarium of science-based medicine that could save her
So why haven't we cured cancer, anyway?
I close with the same question with which I opened. Why haven't we cured cancer yet, anyway? Yes, I know it's a bit of a misleading question, given that we can actually cure quite a few cancers, including several leukemias and lymphomas, which are curable with chemotherapy and radiation, and solid tumors like breast and colorectal cancer which are curable with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Unfortunately, although we do fairly well (and in some cases very well) against early stage cancer, we don't do so well against stage IV metastatic disease, particularly solid tumors. The vast majority of these are not curable, and, very likely, the vast majority are much like the prostate cancer specimens studied by these researchers, full of chromosomal rearrangements and mutations leading to abnormalities in many different signaling pathways.
Does that mean I have no hope? Of course not! Otherwise, I wouldn't keep doing what I'm doing. I am simply expressing humility in the face of a protean foe that has thus far withstood our best efforts to eradicate it. That does not mean that it will continue to do so. After all, never before have we had the tools that we have now to probe deeply into the biology of cancer at the whole genome level as we do today.
Still, it will be hard.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/02/why_cant_we_cure_cancer.php
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More on that question from Orac:
I'm a cancer surgeon and have been since I finished my fellowship nearly 13 years ago. That is, of course, one big reason that, after I found myself drifting towards becoming a skeptic, it didn't take long for me to take an interest in "alternative medicine," in particular alternative medicine for cancer. Perhaps that's why I went a little bit crazy on Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski earlier this week for his "antineoplaston" therapy and his clinic's harassment of critical bloggers. As a result of that incident, I decided to keep my eye out even more than usual for clinics, websites, or practitioners promoting woo as a cure for cancer, the better to apply skepticism, and, of course, some not-so-Respectful Insolence to woo-meisters who so desperately require it. In the process, I anticipate discovering dubious doctors of whom I had never heard before and making myself more aware of what is out there in terms of cancer quackery.
The sheer quantity and (lack of) quality of cancer woo are depressing to behold.
That's how I wandered into the Oasis of Healing and one Dr. Thomas Lodi, who describes himself as a homeopathic physician. Yes, if I were ever to be diagnosed with cancer, the first place I'd be going is to a homeopathic physician
Of course, two out of three of these things sound just like the "conventional" medicine upon which so much contempt is heaped. It's just the methods that differ in that instead of being based on science they are based on magical thinking and prescientific notions of how disease develops. For instance, what is Dr. Lodi's idea for targeting and eliminating cancer? IPT low dose chemotherapy and intravenous vitamin C. I've written extensively about how weak the evidence is supporting intravenous vitamin C, but what about IPT? What does that stand for? Insulin potentiation therapy, that's what. IPT is pure quackery, with no evidence to support it. Basically, it involves the patient fasting and then being dosed with enough insulin to induce hypoglycemia. As the blood sugar level falls, chemotherapy is administered in doses far lower than what are normally used and normally effective. The claim is that insulin "opens the door" to the cell to let the chemotherapy in, or, as Dr. Lodi puts it, "Insulin is Nature's 'bow' that allows us to aim straight into the 'target' (cancer cells)."
While it's possible that insulin might somehow improve the efficacy of chemotherapy (one study suggests in one cancer that it might), evidence is lacking that insulin can radically decrease necessary doses of chemotherapy for various cancers. Quackwatch, of course, has a good deconstruction. More up-to-date information would suggest that some cancers overexpress receptors for insulin-like growth factors (IGFs). In breast cancer, although the data are somewhat conflicting, IGF-1 receptor expression appears to be a favorable prognostic factor. However, in bile duct cancer, the IGF-1 receptor appears to be a negative prognostic factor. Even in breast cancer under some situations, activating the insulin receptor might not be a good thing. What I find really odd, however, is that this guy's a homeopath, and here he is, giving "unnatural" insulin (produced using recombinant DNA technology) and toxic chemotherapy drugs to patients. Seriously. That's not in the least bit "natural." What it is, in reality, is giving patients suboptimal doses of chemotherapy and thus lowering the chance that the chemotherapy will be effective
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/12/a_homeopathic_physician_in_arizona_vs_science.php
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Cancer might be one of those things which is cured one step at a time.
There are suggestions all throughout science that the insulin receptor may be one of the very basic drivers of BC, but one would never know that when one looks at the standard receptor testing, ER/PR/her2.
The fact that we have for decades had an inexpensive treatment which reduces insulin levels makes the question even more relevant.
http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/16/6/1695.full
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Kay, if you have access to any completed trials on Metformin in BC, please link.
I would surely like to have that when I ask again for a prescription for metformin.
Thanks,
Kitty
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It seems to me that the studies have confirmed the complexity of the cancer process, not simplified it to a single suggested treatment as seems the case in IPT. Please remember that when we say BC, we're talking about many different diseases.
Exactly. That's the very reason you can out someone as a quack who claims that they have the one treatment that will cure not only breast cancer but all cancers. More often than not quacks will have that one treatment that they are touting as a cure all. Breast cancer cannot be linked together by one etiology and cured by one remedy.
ie. breast cancer is caused by a lack of iodine and we all should guzzle copious amounts of Lugols iodine to cure ourselves.
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Kittykitty,I just finished reading some of your posts on other forums. Sweetie, you are obviously too intelligent for BCO. There is a woman on this board whose screen name is “wornoutmom”. She is currently using IPT and having amazing success to say the least (and she is not alone). You should read her thread. I think you’ll find it very interesting and inspiring. It’s easy to find. It’s the only thread that the mods have locked, so far. “Survivors who have only used Alternative Treatments” (SEE Pages 1 and 80-96). I suggest that you PM wornoutmom as well if you have questions. Like you, she really knows her stuff!
In this video Dr. Walter Lemmo discusses the history and application of insulin potentiated therapy in cancer care. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHrKcdSRjFo
By integrating IPT into a protocol that includes a healthy, organic diet, free of processed food and sugar, along with an individualized nutritional regimen to heal the body, apparently some doctors are able to heal up to 60 percent of their terminally-ill patients. This is because natural IPT regimens not only kill cancer cells in a targeted fashion, but also strengthen the body and immune system, which is destroyed by conventional treatments.0 -
Zuvart, you have me confused with someone else.
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Would love to see the independently certified documentation regarding "curing" 60% of terminally ill patients. What were they terminally ill with? As for WOM, we don't know really who she or he is. And don't have anyway of verifying her/his statements. Could be an excellent plant for a marketing campaign to generate Internet buzz in advance of the TV/book rollout she/he kept hinting at.
This is the internet for gawd's sake. It wouldn't be the first or last time someone used it to advance a financial benefit. Claim amazing results and folks start asking how they too can buy the product.
I remain skeptical and a bit cranky too. .0 -
Oh, please don't let's stoop so low that we even doubt her gender.
I'm out of this thread. Silly, silly me to pop in. I've heard it all now.
Edited.
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I get really cranky when people invite themselves to the Alt forums with their quackpot propaganda and leave trails of insults. I've seen minimum half a dozen links to the quackwatch and Orac's sites in the past 24 hours. There are way too many squatters of that sort here and BCO should address this major problem before things get really out of hand
Sorry KittyKitty that they are trainwrecking your thread.
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I stand by my skepticism but in the interests of minimizing the crankiness I'll delete the post.
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