Dichloroacetate (DCA) as a cure for cancer A while ago I read about a cheap and safe drug that kills most cancers. It was the already known compound dichloroacetate (DCA) and the discovery was widely reported in the media. The results at that time were only preliminary, but people still used it "off-label" despite not being approved as a cancer drug. The compound itself has been known for a while and is therefore not patentable itself. Some people then claimed that "big pharma" would have no interest in such a cure they could not earn a lot of money from and that such a drug would never be approved. Where the initial claims validated, does DCA show effectiveness against some cancers? Is it a viable drug or just the result of an overhyped early experiment?

There's an article on cancer.org that sums up the current state of the DCA research pretty well.

Clinical trials take a _long_ time, and this is perhaps more true for medicine than it is for any other field. It is not surprising that preliminary indications reported in 2007, have not yet reached the market.

From what I've been able to gather, research on the topic progresses as you'd expect (it does not seem inhibited by a lack of interest from the medical establishment), and it even seems promising. The article linked to above references a 2010 study, which I do not have access to, but see the discussion in the cancer.org article for more on that study.