“Is DCA worth trying? We absolutely think so,” proclaimed a website promoting the laboratory chemical sodium dichloroacetate (DCA) as a treatment for cancer earlier this year.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearly did not agree. Last week it visited the site’s owners and told them to stop making and selling DCA from a sister website, or face criminal prosecution.

Jim Tassano of Sonora, California, claims to have sold DCA to more than 2000 people, with no reports of serious side effects, via his website www.buydca.com.

However, on the 17 July he posted the following message on the site. “Two agents from the FDA visited us today and ordered that we stop making and selling DCA. Unfortunately, the site www.buydca.com will be shut down. It is against US government law to sell substances with the suggestion that they are cancer treatments unless they are approved by the FDA. DCA can still be obtained from pharmacies with a prescription and from chemical companies.”


The FDA confirmed that agents from their Office of Criminal Investigations had visited Tassano, but declined to comment further.

‘Improvements reported’

In an interview with New Scientist, Tassano told us: “We’ve seen cancers where it doesn’t seem to respond at all [to DCA], but a lot of people have reported improvements in their symptoms.”

“I’m disappointed [that the FDA has shut the website down], but not surprised. It is an unapproved cancer treatment and we have become very high profile. I guess the pressure has got to be too much for the FDA,” he said.

Tassano continues to host discussions on the supposed virtues of the chemical, which has not yet undergone human trials as a cancer therapy, on his original site www.thedcasite.com.

Researchers studying DCA as a potential cancer drug welcomed the FDA’s action. “The FDA is doing the absolutely right thing to help protect vulnerable cancer patients from the unregulated use of a drug that should be studied in properly designed clinical studies,” says Chi Van Dang at Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, US.

Worrying reports

Kate Law, Cancer Research UK’s clinical trial director, agrees: “Reports of people buying personal supplies of DCA from sources such as the internet were very worrying.”

“It is important that all new treatments are carefully investigated to make sure they are effective and safe for use in patients. DCA is no exception, so we are pleased that the FDA has taken the decisive action to limit the sale of DCA over the internet,” she says.

Clinical trials of DCA are expected to take place in the near future. Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton has just resubmitted protocols to Health Canada, and hopes to gain approval to for a safety trial of DCA in human cancer patients in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Van Dang has just received notice of funding to carry out additional studies of DCA in animals with cancer, with the intention of conducting clinical trials in lymphoma patients within three years.