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What is the context of this research?

Our 28 day pilot human trial of 10 subjects with advanced cancers on a very low carbohydrate ketogenic diet (KD) was publilshed in Nutrition (Elsevier) in 2012. Patients with the greatest extent of ketosis had stable cancers or partial remission, while those with the least ketosis showed continued progressive cancer.

In cell culture studies we published that ketone bodies (KB) inhibited growth of 7 different cancers from 20-50%, leaving normal cells unaffected.

Despite a favorable editorial & the Metabolism Award, our proposal to scale up to 65 patients & extend our cell culture work was rejected by the NIH/NCI, as they are committed to drug therapy. We appeal now to people who are interested in supporting promising dietary cancer research.

What is the significance of this project?

We believe there is a great opportunity to learn more about the potential of ketogenic and very low carbohydrate diets to develop into safe and non-toxic methods to help in cancer control. Most treatments for advanced cancers require cocktails of 5 highly toxic drugs administered in multiple rounds of chemotherapy, only to fail to achieve a cure. These attempts may indeed add weeks or even months of precious life, but too often severely reduce life's quality, as survival is marked by weakness, profound fatigue, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and serious infections. We believe that, in at least some cancers, ketogenic diets may be able to potentiate other treatments while reducing their toxic doses.

What are the goals of the project?

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are important molecules inall cells, but in high concentrations cause frequent mutations. Cancers produce more ROS than normal cells and mutate frequently into ever more aggressive forms. But ROS that are too high can kill even a cancer cell, so cancers also produce a protein (called UCP2) that helps block ROS from getting too high.

We’ve only recently been able to measure ROS at the same time as UCP2 in our cell experiments. We’ve confirmed findings (also shown by others), that KBs, added to normal cells, reduce ROS. But KB added to cancers have variable effects depending on the cancer. It will be essential to understand the relation of KB to ROS in cancers to better understand Ketogenic diets as a cancer treatment going forward.