Conclusions

The following is a summary of major conclusions from my treatise, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease, published in 2012.

  1. No real progress has been made in the management of advanced or metastatic cancer for more than 40 years. The number of people dying each year and each day has changed little in more than 10 years.
  2. Most of the conceptual advances made in understanding the mechanisms of cancer have more to do with nonmetastatic tumors than with metastatic tumors.
  3. Most cancer, regardless of cell or tissue origin, is a singular disease of respiratory insufficiency coupled with compensatory fermentation.
  4. Some factors that can cause respiratory insufficiency and cancer include age, viral infections, hypoxia, inflammation, rare inherited mutations, radiation, and carcinogens.
  5. The genomic instability seen in tumor cells is a downstream epiphenomenon of respiratory insufficiency and enhanced fermentation.
  6. Genomic instability makes cancer cells vulnerable to metabolic stress.
  7. Cancer cells do not have a growth advantage over normal cells.
  8. Cancer progression is not Darwinian but Lamarckian.
  9. The view that most cancer is a genetic disease is no longer credible.
  10. Respiratory injury can explain Szent-Gyorgyi’s oncogenic paradox.
  11. Most metastatic cancers arise from respiratory injury in cells of myeloid origin, possibly involving hybridization events between macrophages and neoplastic epithelial cells.
  12. Cancer cells depend largely on glucose and glutamine metabolism for survival, growth, and proliferation.
  13. Restricted access to glucose and glutamine will compromise cancer cell growth and survival.
  14. Enhanced fermentation is largely responsible for tumor cell drug resistance.
  15. Protection of mitochondria from oxidative damage will prevent or reduce risk of cancer.
  16. Life style changes will be needed to manage and prevent cancer.
  17. Mitochondrial enhancement therapies administered together with drugs that target glucose and glutamine metabolism will go far as a nontoxic, cost-effective solution to the cancer problem.
  18. A new era will emerge for cancer management and prevention, once cancer becomes recognized as a metabolic disease.