Dichloroacetate (DCA) in Patients With Previously Treated Metastatic Breast or Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCL)

In the United States, approximately 180,000 new cases of breast cancer occur annually, and there are more than 40,000 deaths. More than 150,000 cases develop each year in Canada and the European community together, resulting in over 60,000 deaths from breast cancer. The vast majority of patients who die from breast cancer succumb to metastatic disease. Endocrine therapy and chemotherapy (using either sequential single agents or combination regimens) remain the principal treatments for women with metastatic breast cancer. A wide variety of classes of chemotherapeutic agents have activity as single agents. Median survival remains approximately two years for women with metastatic breast cancer, and less than 3% of patients will experience long-term survival after treatment. The development of new treatment strategies is therefore essential to improve outcome for patients with metastatic breast cancer. The population selected for this study will have previously received, where appropriate, those drugs with clearly defined survival advantages (anthracyclines, taxanes, trastuzumab, and hormonal therapy). Patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer are considered incurable. Palliative chemotherapies, such as platinum-based doublet, Taxotere or Pemetrexed or Erlotinib (an epidermal growth factor tyrosine kinase) have been proven to improve symptoms, and survival in patients with good performance status. Despite these treatments, the median survival of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer is about one year. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop novel therapy in these patients.