

Antibiotics targeting mitochondria kill cancer stem cells of several tumor types - adventured
http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=3174

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im3w1l
There was an article some time ago about fasting to boost the efficacy of
chemo, by causing selective uptake in cancer cells.

I guess that should be relevant in this case to, since I guess the fasting
should decrease the activity of mitochondria in normal cells but not in cancer
cells.

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sjcsjc
Is this is the article you're referring to?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856043)

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im3w1l
Yeah

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rgejman
General thoughts: Cancer patients—in particular those with blood cancers—are
routinely immunocompromised and put on antibiotics. Any potent effects would
almost certainly have been realized by now. There are a lot of people who have
made their careers by tracking what therapies work and which don't—and that
includes controlling for "confounders" like those given antibiotics, etc.

Oncotarget isn't a bad journal—and this is certainly a good idea which may
have applications we can't quite imagine yet. But it's unlikely to be a potent
cancer therapy.

~~~
pistle
Unless I'm missing something...

Getting rid of the CSC's is great for stopping the formation of new tumor-
forming cancer cells, but you still need to kill and/or remove all the
existing cancer cells.

So, this could treat the cancer stem cells as if it were an "infection-
vector," but you'd still have to stop any current "infection" to save the
patient.

This wouldn't really help late stage or aggressive types, but could make
treatment efficacy better for cancers in early stages since it may help remove
the cells that help a cancer come out of remission.

Maybe people with higher genetic propensity for covered cancer types could
rotate on these drugs on a regular basis to reduce their risk? The eternal
z-pak... Be interesting to see what the epidemiologists and actuaries come up
with to assess the cost-benefit. Consistent anti-biotics would accelerate
incidence of anti-biotic-resistant infections. There is no zero-risk since you
can't actually take these drugs constantly. A tumor-forming cell could be
produced between cycles. The long-term effects at such dosing levels were
likely never studied and side-effects could be problems.

More likely, this would become one part of the full-court-press applied to
treatment regimens.

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pwrfid
At high enough concentrations, you are going to wipe out many eukaryotic cells
(cancer or not). I don't really see any good control experiments

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copperx
There are publications (2002, 2003) publications that reported similar
results:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11912125](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11912125)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14597870](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14597870)

I wonder why there were few follow-up studies? or what happened to these lines
of research?

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6stringmerc
Here's the quote from the abstract that I found revealing:

 _Finally, recent clinical trials with doxycycline and azithromycin (intended
to target cancer-associated infections, but not cancer cells) have already
shown positive therapeutic effects in cancer patients, although their ability
to eradicate cancer stem cells was not yet appreciated._

So, the way I read it, "It's a good idea, but we haven't gotten it to work
yet, even after some testing, but it's a good idea."

I've been around a few research science labs and understand the pressures on
them. Getting published is good...but not sure of the provenance of this
outlet.

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lkrubner
Oddly, they mention azithromycin, but I found this:

[http://aac.asm.org/content/50/6/2042.full](http://aac.asm.org/content/50/6/2042.full)

which says:

"These results were compared to the inhibitory profiles of other antibiotics
that function by inhibiting bacterial protein synthesis. Of these,
chloramphenicol and tetracycline were significant inhibitors of mammalian
mitochondrial protein synthesis while the macrolides, lincosamides, and
aminoglycosides were not."

Seems like "doxycycline" would be more precise than "antibiotics"? After all,
I assume this effect can not true of those "antibiotics" that are thought to
increase the risk of cancer? (I am thinking in particular of metronidazole,
and I put the word antibiotics in quotes because metronidazole is a very
strange drug that is difficult to classify, and even though it is sometimes
used as an antibiotic, it was not initially thought of as an antibiotic.)

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tomohawk
It sounds like what this means is that after removal of a tumor, a good thing
to do would be to undergo a course of antibiotics?

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bjwbell
At least doxycycline. Whether the results hold up in phase I/II/III clinical
trials is still TBD,
[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT01590082](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT01590082).

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fasteo
Oddly enough, I was put on Tetracycline to slow down the progression of my
mitochondrial disease, i.e, Tetracycline also offers some protection to the
mitochondria.

[1]
[http://www.neurology.org/content/68/14/1159.short](http://www.neurology.org/content/68/14/1159.short)

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tokenadult
Who has ever heard of this journal before?

