VITAMIN C and CANCER - anecdotes and history

Back in the 1970’s, the two-time Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling and the Scottish Dr. Ewan Cameron published their Cancer and Vitamin C research. They demonstrated that regular high doses of Vitamin C can be effective in the prevention of cancer, in the treatment of exisitng cancers and as an adjunct to other types of therapy for cancer, either conventional or alternative .
Vitamin C helps to support our natural defenses against cancer. It supports the encapsulation or sealing off of tumors and therefore resists metastasis or the spreading of the cancer. It reduces cachexia or severe weight loss. It enhances the immune system. It improves overall health. Cancer patients taking therapeutic-dose Vitamin C report an improved appetite, increased mental alertness and a decrease in pain.

Some Background

In 1960 Dr. Cameron began to look for ways to inhibit cancer cells from infiltrating and damaging surrounding healthy tissue. This led him to study the “ground substance” that binds the cells of normal tissues, because a strengthening of the ground substance could increase the resistance of the normal tissues surrounding a malignant tumor.

This “intercellular cement” contains long molecular chains, called glycosaminoglycans and  filaments of the protein called collagen, which give it strength. Dr. Cameron’s research concluded that malignant tumors release an enzyme named hyaluronidase, which reduces the glycosaminoglycans into smaller molecules, which weakens the cellular cement. Also some and possibly all, malignant tumors liberate another enzyme, collagenase, which breaks up collagen fibers. The activity of these two enzymes makes it easier for a malignant tumor to grow into the surrounding tissues.
The quest was to find a method to inhibit these two enzymes. No one had found a way of doing this until 1971, when two new ideas, both involving Vitamin C, were put forth.

How It Worked

Drs. Cameron and Rotman found that increased Vitamin C stimulates normal cells to produce increased amounts of hyaluronidase inhibitor and prevents hyaluronidase from breaking down the intercellular cement. Dr. Pauling discovered that vitamin C is required for the synthesis of collagen and that increasing the intake of Vitamin C caused more collagen fiber production.
In November 1971, Dr. Cameron began clinical trials, giving Vitamin C to patients with advanced cancer - 10 grams of Vitamin C per day (by intravinous). Conventional treatment had already failed for these patients and they were classified as “untreatable”.
Several of these first patients exhibited an almost unbelievable response to supplemental Vitamin C, regaining energy, returning to work, showing remarkable physical well-being and far outliving their expected life span. Virtually every patient reported feeling much better and much stronger.  The experiences of these first brave patients led Dr. Cameron to believe that Vitamin C therapy was doing something that was not yet understood, but very significant.

Vitamin C and Carnitine
 
Some ten years later Dr. Cameron came across the work of Dr. R. E. Hughes on scurvy, which is the classical syndrome that accompanies severe Vitamin C depletion. Scurvy produces extreme physical weakness and exhaustion, along with other unpleasant symptoms, such as tooth loss.
Dr. Hughes had discovered that Vitamin C was an essential co-factor for the biosynthesis of carnitine. Carnitine’s only known function (at the moment) is the transport of fatty acids across the mitochondrial membranes (and into the proverbial furnace within each cell)  so that they can be oxidized for the production of energy.
It has been well documented that cancer patients have very low body reserves of Vitamin C. Dr. Cameron hypothesized that cancer patients would also have a greatly reduced ability to synthesize their own muscle carnitine  (“this is the clear biochemical explanation for cancer cachexia, the systemic syndrome of progressive muscular weakness, muscle wasting, steady weight loss, increasing apathy, lassitude and fatigue, even constipation, that accompanies every advanced cancer ”). 

Vitamin C and the Immune System

It is now generally accepted that the immune system plays an important role in an individual’s resistance to disease and cancer. There is also significant evidence that Vitamin C is essential for the immune system to function efficiently. The natural killer cells are the most important cells in our immune system and in the battle against cancer, because they attack and destroy abnormal cells. It has been shown that NK cells are active only if they contain relatively large amounts of Vitamin C.
Cancer patients given 5 grams of Vitamin C orally on three consecutive days experienced a doubling in the number of lymphocytes in their bloodstream and had continued high levels for another week. A dose of 10 grams per day caused this rate to triple and a dose of 18 grams per day caused the production of lymphocytes to increase to four times the original value. PGE-1, a member of the group of chemicals called the prostaglandins, plays a major role in the regulation of the lymphocytes. The production of PGE-1 depends on Vitamin C. Vitamin C has also been shown to increase the body’s production of interferon, which also has anti-cancer properties.

Encapsulation of Tumors
 
Adequate levels of Vitamin C must be available for the body to encapsulate a tumor.  This is a very complex process involving a number of factors including the production of collagen fibers. The collagen production is dependent on the body’s available supply of Vitamin C. Vitamin C’s ability to stimulate the synthesis of collagen explains why Vitamin C helps promote wound healing. Well-informed surgeons add 5 grams or more of sodium ascorbate to each liter of intravenous fluid, as well as giving the patient supplemental vitamin C before and after surgery. Extra Vitamin C given to a patient undergoing surgery for cancer has the added benefit of stimulating the immune system. It may enable NK cells to destroy any wandering malignant cells that might be released into the bloodstream during the operation, thus decreasing the chance of future metastasis.

Vitamin C, Chemotherapy and Radiation

Dr. Paul Okunieff, Associate Professor of radiation medicine at Harvard University Medical School, has recently reported that vitamin C can enhance the effectiveness of radiation therapy by protecting healthy tissue. When laboratory animals were given Vitamin C prior to radiation, there was a significant reduction in the radiation damage to both the exposed skin and the bone marrow.
Vitamin C has been shown to enhance the anti-cancer activity of some chemotherapeutic drugs that frequently produce severe side effects by reducing the toxicity to vital organs, along with a prolongation in survival time in animals receiving vitamin C, without diminishing the anti-tumor effect of the drugs.

A Powerful Antioxidant

It is well established that free-radical activity can cause cancer. Vitamin C has been shown to be one of the body’s most effective antioxidant agents. It can act directly by destroying free radicals and indirectly by restoring the antioxidant properties of vitamin E.

The NCI

At the National Cancer Institute’s symposium on vitamin C and cancer, Dr. Balz Frei presented research in which he exposed human blood plasma to various types of cancer-causing chemicals, including cigarette smoke. He found that no cancer-causing activity, like lipid peroxidation of cellular membranes, could be detected in the human blood plasma as long as adequate vitamin C was present. Yet as soon as the vitamin C was depleted, the cancer-causing chemical reactions began again.

Clinical Studies and Controversy

Due to widespread interest among cancer patients, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded what eventually turned out to be a series of three randomized trials known as the Moertel studies. The primary objective of these studies was to confirm or disprove Drs. Cameron and Pauling’s research.
Dr. Pauling wanted to consult on the protocol and design for the first of these studies so that no mistakes could be made. Moertel and his colleagues ignored his offer. Dr. Pauling learned that the study had been completed when he read headlines in the newspaper announcing the “Failure of High-Dose Vitamin C Therapy to Benefit Patients with Advanced Cancer.” Both doctors vigorously questioned the results. They pointed out major flaws in all of the Moertel/Mayo Clinic studies, such as the selection of patients who had previously been aggressively treated with chemotherapy (nearly 90 percent). The   Vitamin C was administered orally instead of intravenously - a huge difference. Also there was a lack of testing for compliance, shorter duration of treatment and a return of the patients to chemotherapy.
In fact, in one of the Mayo/Moetel studies, patients were abruptly taken off Vitamin C, which probably caused a rebound effect that hastened their demise. Why was so much time and money spent to test the Vitamin C without giving proper attention to following their exact and previously established protocols? Unfortunately, this is the research that now stands out in most doctors’ minds.
A study of terminal Japanese cancer patients by Morishige and Murate also concluded that when treated with Vitamin C, these patients survived almost five times longer than the controls and the authors of the study stated that their study “may be considered to substantiate the observations reported by Drs.Cameron and Pauling.”

The NCI Symposium
 
In September 1989 the NCI and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases co-sponsored a major conference on the relationship between Vitamin C and cancer.  Dr. Linus Pauling gave the opening talk and was finally acknowledged .
Perhaps the most important aspect of the conference is that the NCI, after years of ignoring the subject, now seems to acknowledge the benefits of  Vitamin C in  cancer treatment.
There is an unfortunate, erroneous widespread belief in the medical community that large intakes of Vitamin C can cause kidney damage.

Dr. Cameron reported that no instance of this complication had been encountered in over one thousand cancer patients under his care, or in many other patients ingesting multigram amounts of buffered ascorbate for many years.