It doesn't look any promising to me, since it appears to have been tried for decades with obviously no substantial effect, but here is an official link from the US-governemnt covering many aspects and mentioning 20 y.o. studies in the Netherlands:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/antineoplastons/patient/page2

so, is there any promising breakthrough for therapeutic discovery of cancer treatment and prevention from your point of view? What is the reliable approach to activate p53 permanently in anti-carcinogenesis pathway?

I think gene therapy would be the future treatment of both early and late cancer. Since i was a student in the final year some 33 years ago, i was impressed by the ability of Vitamin B12 and Folic acid to convert the neuroblastoma into ganglioneuroma. This meant to me that we can manipulate tumour cell genetic coding and convert them to benign cells. Our fathers still remember that cellulitis was fatal in the pre-antibiotic era about 70 years ago. Shall our grand children feel the same regarding cancer as we feel now regarding cellulitis? May be.

Thank you Budak for refining your question. "Evidence-based medicine" is a current term since many years which allows any new possible treatment to be tested with a lot of precaution, for example, solid reproducible data. In terms of patient experiments one should avoid potential harming of a patient already suffering from cancer. Of course not every approach can be tested in cell culture or animal experiments, but this means there should be highest ethical standards befor testing anything in humans.

Since you mention specifically p53; 20 years ago, I was the first in the world to detect a p53 in a human medulloblastoma (childhood brain tumor). I also detected - to the best of my knowledge today - the first high incidence of p53 mutations in low-grade astrocytoma (WHO grade II), as well as in astrocytoma WHO grade III (also in Glioblastoma, but that was known at that time).

And p53 in most tumors is affected in probably about 50% of all malignant tumors, but often one allele is mutated and the other is lost.

Assuming there was a way to manipulate p53 pathways, I doubt this would be easy, especially if both alleles in a cell were affected (inactivated).

The other point is: just assuming a 50% chance of any of many different mutations of just one single gene and then treating someone with an unproven approach appears to me just as gambling. Unfortunately, I guess the many cells within a tumor (including tumor stem cells) may have many different genetic mutations accumulated, so that just repairing one gene of so many more (in my view) has no big chance to cure the majority of patients. My hope for the future generations of patienst is that there will be once a way using specific immunological approaches - but I expect this in perhaps 100 years to be used like penicillin today.

Concerning the above mentioned neuroblastomas - I think this is the only tumor entity, for which a rare, but sometimes spontaneous differentiation of neuronal tumor cells can occur, but this appears to be very specific to this type of tumor, unfortunately not to others. In principle, the approach to differentiate tumor cells (or tumor stem cells) appears to be one way to do research (for the next 100 years).

PS here is my first description of a primary medulloblastoma with p53 (not just a cell culture)

Article p53 Mutations in Nonastrocytic Human Brain Tumors

PS2 here is my first detection of a high incidence of p53 in even low-grade astrocytic brain tumors (also lacking the other allele)

Article p53 mutations are associated with 17p allelic loss in Grade ...

Hi Budak,

If you are interested in a promising concept, I suggest you to pay attention to "cell inflation assisted chemotherapy":

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cam4.91/abstract

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBLnL4XA6fc

TO Robert: Do you agree that the application of free-energy technology can develop advanced medical treatment for the terminally-ill patient (e.g cancer patient) through the use of specially developed plasma reactors?

*You can check this website for getting more info about that technology.

http://www.keshefoundation.org/

Sorry, Budak, I tried to help, but to be very honest: it seems this has nothing to do with any real science. It is perhaps a way to make money in selling questionable books about otherwise likely to be unpublishable thoughts. Sorry, I can not comment any further in this topic - it has in my view nothing to do with real research, science or anything close to evidence-based medicine.

How about promoting natural way to restore the health that may differ with conventional medicine, for example holistic medicine? The figure who promotes this treatment such as Dr David Brownstein. He said that the way of treating cancer is using natural hormones and nutritional therapies. In his medical practice, his main idea of preventing cancer is managing the risk of iodine deficiency in each individual.

I can advice to accept only real science, as well as real medicine. Anything else may just harm patients, families, friends - perhaps for a short relief of false hope. Of course, I understand, that one wants to just try everything - although there is often no scientific evidence, or - unfortunately in many cases - there is even evidence for harming people (and making money out of questionable treatments which may not deserve the term therapy). But sure, others may have different views, believes, experience...

Okay,.how about MTTC and amygdalin therapy?

To Malay Boy:

MTTC ? Never heard of it before, but I found http://mttc-worldwide.org - this appears to me a serious organization, which gives awards to real and proven pioneers in cancer research.

amygdalin - doesn't seem to work at all; it appears not any single study in decades ever showed any goodeffect, but the risk of harming a patient due to potential toxicity is there - depending on the country and laws one may sue the persons providing harmful treatments to suffering people. I think scientists should work better with politicians to stop any harmful treatments worldwide to reduce the suffering of patients with cancer and robbing their families by questionable helpers.

MTTC stands for molecular targeted therapy of cancer. I think this new therapy will give a promising result for treating cancer in future. so far, this therapy works better in combination with other cancer drug and traditional chemotherapy.

Can you share with me about the potential toxicity of amygdalin? Is there any side effects from taking it in high amount?

for MTTC - this stand for real science, real medicine - that is basicalle what I suggested in my very first response

for amydalin - pls use our friend google; most preparations appear to be just toxic

Robert, may I have a question?, did u ever go through the amygdalin story, and observed potential effects done in primary or clinical research? I would not doubt sth just because its on google ;), check the pubmed too, Roman

Hi Roman, do you ever have any experience of conducting research on amygdalin?can you share with me? how about the potential effect of cesium for cancer treatment?

Hi Hudec, yes you may have a question. I checked pubmed as well - and this clearly shows basically the potential or proven real fraud on tumor patients and their families involved with amygdalin and "freedom of choice" worldwide in the 1980s. I am convinced it is safe to say today, that it is scientifically proven (pls check pubmed yourself) not to work for cancer patients. It is also not that non-toxic as claimed. Wasting time with such a non-working treatment can reduce both, life-expectance and quality of life for the patient, who may get better treatment in real medicine. There were many ridiculous claims for therapeutical potential which were not based on real science. In this case, I just recommended to someone to read, for example, google, who does not seem to be familiar with scientific research. This does not mean that I usually would base my opinion just on google, and especially not on wikipedia or similar.

The pubmed is just full of reports on amygdalin proven not to work, for example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6986971

It clearly looks that someone just want to troll people here.

HIBT ?

I feel sorry if I've trolled you, Dr Robert Eibl. You can check this link for getting more info about amygdalin. I got it from MSKCC.

http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/herb/amygdalin

@Jonathan Murphy - you claim that Mayo and MSKCC had mentioned no toxicity of Amygdalin - I checked the warning (!!!) website of MSKCC (http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/herb/amygdalin), which does mention severe TOXICITY, but NOT ANY THERAPEUTICAL EFFECT (!!!), even wrong (disproven) scientific assumptions on the postulated pathway. AND: they state that Amygdalin is NOT APPROVED FOR THE USE IN THE USA. In addition, even pharmaceutical preparations appeared to have contaminations with bacteria. I started a question here on RG "why" patients with all this knowledge of disproven treatments still become the victims of harming and often expensive tricks.

http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/herb/amygdalin

From the above mentioned webpage (for Consumers): "Bottom Line: Amygdalin (Laetrile) has toxic side effects and has caused decreased survival in cancer patients." I think this says it all.