How to Starve Cancer

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Another key, off-label drug McLelland learned about from reading Life Extension was the diabetes drug, metformin. Metformin is critical for starving cancer because it cuts off cancer’s supply to glucose and insulin, and reduces IGF-1. McLelland created a diagram depicting her approach to starving cancer that she calls the “Metro Map,” based on an analogy of an underground metro system.

Nutrients or vitamins are not simply good or bad, cancer-causing or cancer-fighting. If a book or blog recommends a single “cancer diet”—or even a supplement that promises to fight cancer—beware. It could end up making things worse. Especially if there is a person on the cover in a white coat with arms folded, and with teeth that look like they have never been used. In the early stages of her research, McLelland first learned that glucose feeds most cancers and that IGF-1 (an insulin-like growth factor hormone found in high levels in dairy and meat) also helped to drive its growth. For a long time, the prevailing thought was that altered metabolism in cancer cells was the result of genes and mutations that determined metabolism,” says Jason Locasale, a cancer biologist at Duke University. “Now, as we know, it’s a complex interaction of environment and genes, and one of the major factors at play is nutrition.”This book will answer all the burning questions you face when you begin to explore integrative treatments. Which ‘off-label’ drugs and supplements should you take? Should you try the ketogenic diet? Should you fast? Is fat safe? How much and when should you exercise? Jane explains why each patient needs a personalised approach and, importantly, how to work this out. McLelland discovered that there were numerous drugs on the market designed for other purposes (like heart disease or infections) that could go beyond diet and supplements to effectively cut off cancer’s various fuel lines. These drugs are considered “off-label,” since they were developed for conditions other than cancer. I recognized that Life Extension was ahead of its time. It was providing information that nobody else seemed to be providing, and piecing together research and reporting on it before anybody else did,” said McLelland. “ Life Extension really was instrumental in helping me survive.” Years later, she also discovered the anti-cancer effects of the antibiotic doxycycline (which slows the creation of new cancer cells) and of the anti-worming drug mebendazole (which stops the cancer cells from being able to take on more glucose). Last year, Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Columbia University researcher and author of The Emperor of All Maladies, and his colleagues found that at least one particular chemotherapy drug can be made more effective by combining its use with eating a low-sugar, protein-and-fat-heavy “ketogenic” diet. In a paper in Nature, the researchers suggest that the effect was related to decreasing the levels of insulin that the pancreas releases into the blood in response to eating.

We have determined that this metabolic defect is present in 90 percent of sarcomas,” said senior author Brian A. Van Tine, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine. “Healthy cells don’t have this weakness. We have been trying to create a therapy that takes advantage of the metabolic defect because, in theory, it should target only the tumor. Basically, the defect allows us to force the tumor cells to starve.”Because cancer is a term that encapsulates many different diseases—with different changes in different metabolic pathways in different cells in different parts of the body—no single metabolic therapy is right for every person. What makes one cancer grow more slowly could conceivably hasten another. Just as avoiding excessive sugar is crucial for people with diabetes, lest they lose their vision and feet, sugar can save the life of a person with critical hypoglycemia. McLelland underwent surgery to remove the tumor in her lung, and she endured six months of chemo (at a much lower dose than that recommended by her oncologist). But this time, she also employed a strategy to starve the cancer’s stem cells.

One man who followed her protocol took his PSA numbers from 1008 down to .67. She’s also helped a stage IV pancreatic cancer patient achieve full remission—another success story unheard of in the medical world. This strategy could be applied beyond rare sarcoma tumors because the metabolic defect is often present in other cancers, including certain types of breast, colon, lung, brain and bone tumors, the researchers said. The new study includes data showing similar anti-tumor responses in cell lines from these cancer types. Van Tine also pointed out that all of the drugs used in the study are either already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for other conditions or in ongoing clinical trials investigating cancer drugs.

Working Together

This book will answer all the burning questions you face when you begin to explore complementary cancer care. Which 'off-label' drugs and supplements should you take? Should you try the ketogenic diet? Should you fast? Is fat safe? How much and when should you exercise? Jane explains why each patient needs a personalised approach and, importantly, how to work this out. All of these drugs are cheap and off-patent, which is why they have largely been ignored by the pharmaceutical industry, despite research supporting their effectiveness against cancer,” said McLelland. If you have any questions on the scientific content of this article, please call a Life Extension ® Wellness Specialist at 1-866-864-3027. Unlike most cancer therapies, depleting arginine in the blood does not affect healthy cells. Normal cells don’t rely on external sources of arginine because they don’t have the cancer’s metabolic defect. They continue to make their own arginine, so there is no induced starvation in normal cells even when there is no arginine in the blood. Van Tine said this strategy is based on the properties of a tumor — it shuts down tumor metabolism specifically and nothing else. I already knew that statins would be potentially useful against cervical cancer. But research had also shown that they caused apoptosis in acute myeloid leukemias. I also had overlooked the fact that NSAIDs could cause cell death (apoptosis),” said McLelland. “What I learned from the Life Extension article was that there was a synergy between the two drugs, making them far more potent when taken together.”

Kremer JC, Prudner BC, Lange SES, Bean GR, Schultze MB, Brashears CB, Radyk MD, Redlich N, Tzeng S, Kami K, Shelton L, Li A, Morgan Z, Bomalaski JS, Tsukamoto T, McConathy J, Michel LS, Held JM, Van Tine BA. Arginine deprivation inhibits the Warburg effect and upregulates glutamine anaplerosis and serine biosynthesis in ASS1-deficient cancers. Cell Reports. Jan. 24, 2017. To her doctor’s utter amazement, it appeared that McLelland had beaten the odds once again. Nine months later, she was not only alive, but her cancer blood markers were good. I was massively depressed. With cervical cancer, it’s not just about having a lump cut off,” she said. “Knowing that I would never have my own children was utterly devastating.”

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When Jane McLelland first heard the devastating news, she was only 30 years old. Just three days later, she underwent a complete, radical hysterectomy, followed by months of chemotherapy and radiation. The Metro Map is the key to starving the cancer. Once you’ve done that, killing it becomes much easier,” said McLelland. McLelland’s cervical cancer markers were in the normal range. But in 2003, she received yet another death sentence: treatment-related myelodysplasia, a form of bone marrow mutation that may progress to leukemia. Now, 18 years later, after suffering from cervical cancer, secondary lung cancer, and treatment-related myelodysplasia, she is alive, well, and cancer-free.