Wim Huppes' Prostate Cancer Story

Wim Huppes is a former doctor from the Netherlands He used DCA on his prostate cancer with great success. There are references to this on the Reports page. Here is his story.

November 2008

Dear Jim,

I am a patient. A long time ago I used to be a doctor, but no longer. My job is in government administration nowadays. So I write this email to you as a patient.

Your site has been a great help to me as a patient. Summer last year, radical prostate surgery with lymph node dissection did not cure me. I had stage 4 Gleason 10 prostate cancer that was hormone resistant. For three months, I used the non-standard therapy Tarceva in conjunction with HAART (Viramune, ddI and AZT), with some benefit. However, I was not going to make it.

Your site mentioned DCA. The thing is that my cancer does not have mitochondria. So I thought that in my case, autophagia must be the mechanism of DCA, not the standard idea of apoptosis.

Therefore, I took a more elevated dose of DCA. I took 3 times per week 6 gram DCA for two weeks, and stopped all other medication when DCA appeared to work. The pain in my bottom disappeared. Subsequently, I switched to 3 times per week 4 grams of DCA for 5 weeks. At that point, I had neurological side effects of DCA. I stopped taking DCA. The side effects were not really bad. I went skiing on high altitude (ice) without problems. My cancer appeared gone (choline PET scan, and PSA).

After 6 months, without any medication, I had a small recurrence of my prostate cancer at the exit point of my urethra from my bladder. It is a kind of stage 1, however, without a prostate. I got fractioned radiation therapy, wide field, 70 Gy. After two weeks of radio sensitivity, for a subsequent period of two weeks, my prostate cancer appeared radio resistant. I read the paper of the University of Florida on your site (in Prostate, a medical journal). Therefore, for six days, I took 400 mg of DCA one hour before radiation. It appeared to work. My tumour became radio sensitive again. The last 6 days of radiation, I increased the DCA dose to 800 mg one hour before irradiation. This had no additional effect. It appears to be sufficient to take 400 mg one hour prior to radiation. To me this seems a sensible thing to do, when taking radiation for highly malignant and/or hormone resistant tumours. I believe that my change of survival went from 60% to 80% with this strategy.

Overseeing the literature, my own case, and the tens of patients sharing their results with me, I belief that DCA should be taken in conjunction with other therapy. DCA alone seems to give partial remissions that are worth having, but why would anyone not try to get better?

One strategy that is worth investigating, in my personal opinion, is taking standard chemotherapy and combining it with DCA. If the standard is giving a sufficient change of survival, the dose of DCA could be as low as just 400 mg one hour before chemo. Just to prevent tumour resistance. However, if chances of survival are low, I suppose the dose of DCA could be elevated a lot, up to several grams one hour before chemo. Other schemas of DCA use can be envisioned.

Another strategy that I believe is worth investigating is a chronic medication approach. Two times a day 400 mg DCA, with a pause in the weekends. In conjunction with some standard therapy such as hormonal therapy, or when a standard is lacking, with Velcade, or Viramune or other. I know of one patient with breast cancer metastasis doing this successfully for over half a year now.

I do not know why some patients do not react to DCA. However, it is clear that DCA should be stopped immediately when it is not inducing a response. Patients should be evaluated very quickly, by preference within a week of DCA treatment.

Another problem is that some patients quickly develop side effects of DCA. It is a good idea to have a trained neurologist controlling the stop point, even when DCA is used successfully against cancer.

Yours,

Wim Huppes