Cancer and ATP: The Photon Energy Pathway

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Health

Could cancer be a functional deviation of the cellular energy production mechanism that is open to correction by relatively simple means instead of a genetic mutation that is passed down through cell division? Heinrich Kremer, MD, says that this is indeed the case. His hypothesis of a photon-mediated cellular energy pathway may turn out to substantially add to our understanding of what cancer is, and why such natural substances as curcumin may be effective cancer fighting agents.

Turmeric (Curcuma longa) - a curative spice and coloring agent -
Image from Wilsonart.

According to the World Health Organization, cancer accounted for 13 per cent of deaths world wide in 2005. The trend is rising, which means we have not found the real cause of the disease. Our efforts to treat cancer are centered on symptoms, rather than the factors that cause the disease.

The WHO's cancer information page also says that cancer is the result of a genetic failure of cells:

Cancer arises from one single cell. The transformation from a normal cell into a tumour cell is a multistage process, typically a progression from a pre-cancerous lesion to malignant tumours...

Cancer researchers however have long known that cancer cells are distinguished from their 'normal' cousins by an alteration of the cells' energy metabolism. The mitochondria inside the cells become inactive and the cells switch to a secondary mode of energy production that is based on the fermentation of sugars. This metabolic change has recently been confirmed by a study at Johns Hopkins.

The Hopkins scientists report that the loss of a single gene in kidney cancer cells causes them to stop making mitochondria, the tiny powerhouses of the cell that consume oxygen to generate energy.

Instead, the cancer cells use the less efficient process of fermentation, which generates less energy but does not require oxygen. As a result, the cancer cells must take in large amounts of glucose.

Researchers at the University of Alberta recently discovered a relatively simple way to re-activate the mitochondria and make them re-start normal energy production, using a commonly available substance, dichloroacetate or DCA:

Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors.

Michelakis and his colleagues, including post-doctoral fellow Dr. Sebastian Bonnet, have published the results of their research in the journal Cancer Cell.

Scientists and doctors have used DCA for decades to treat children with inborn errors of metabolism due to mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria, the energy producing units in cells, have been connected with cancer since the 1930s, when researchers first noticed that these organelles dysfunction when cancer is present.

According to Wikipedia, dichloroacetate decreases lactate production by shifting the metabolism of pyruvate from glycolysis towards oxidation in the mitochondria. That is the reason the substance has been used to treat lactic acidosis. Its use in cancer has only recently been pioneered and the University of Alberta researchers caution that more trials are needed, before DCA can be recommended as an anti-tumor agent.

It is against this background that we should see the discovery of Heinrich Kremer, MD, a German medical doctor who is perhaps best known for his unconventional views on AIDS. Kremer says that the current view, according to which the mitochondria's normal energy production pathway is based on chemical oxidation does not go deep enough to allow an understanding of the underlying mechanisms of cancer.

Kremer's discovery is described in his book The Silent Revolution in Cancer and AIDS, which is due to be published in English later this year. German and Italian versions are already available.

The new view on cancer is explained in detail in an article titled The Secret of Cancer: Short-circuit in the Photon Switch, due for publication shortly. I will link it here as soon as it becomes available. Meanwhile, here is a sneak preview.

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Cancer and ATP: The Photon Energy Pathway

(for the full article, we must await publication in the July issue of Townsend Letter for Doctors)

Although the mutation theory of oncogenesis is generally accepted today, it does not explain how cancer cells seemingly are able to evade all the body's normal mechanisms that prevent and correct such mutations, and how they can invade and metastasize in different tissues from those that are primarily concerned.

Consequently, our standard therapies, which are based on the assumption that the deviated cells must be destroyed and which attempt to do so by a slash, burn and poison approach operated by the surgeon, the radiologist and the oncologist, are of little use in prolonging the patient's life or effecting real cures.

Evolution

To understand the new concept of oncogenesis, we must take a look at the evolution of cells and organisms. Cells as present in today's organisms are the result of a fusion, in prehistoric times, of two different types of unicellular life forms into a unique symbiotic combination. A type of cell of the archaea family and another type of the bacteria family entered into symbiosis and formed what is now known as a protist. The cells of mammals including humans today contain genes from both original families. The bacterial symbionts have evolved into the mitochondria which are delegated to take care of energy production.

ATP Energy Pathways

In cancer, the bacterial symbionts go on strike - they refuse to produce any more of the ATP energy molecules they are normally busy churning out all day. The cells thus have to revert to an alternate mode of energy production (glycolysis) which involves fermentation of sugars. This is very much more inefficient than the normal cellular energy mechanism.

But more importantly, and here comes Kremer's very interesting discovery, the normal mode of energy production is not a pure chemical energy pathway. ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is made up of three molecule groups. A base adenine ring that absorbs light quanta in the near ultraviolet band of 270 nanometer wavelength, one sugar molecule and a molecular string with three phosphate groups.

The currently accepted view is that energy production and storage in ATP is by means of chemical energy, stored in the phosphate bonds. The bond energy is then released by hydrolysis in the cytoplasm, where it is used to drive energetic and metabolic processes. Not so, says Kremer. Hydrolysis only yields heat energy, which is not sufficient to drive all the various cell processes. The secret lies in the adenine groups of ATP which absorb photons, but the role of adenine is not adequately explained in the prevailing hypothesis.

The essential components of mitochondrial cell respiration are light absorbing molecules that react to frequencies from the near ultraviolet band down to the yellow/orange spectral range of visible light. Yet, the source of energy for these cellular power plants is not sunlight, as one might easily be led to assume. The flow of para-magnetically aligned electrons in the respiratory organelles gives rise to a low frequency pulsating electromagnetic field which, enormously accelerated through catalytic processes activated by enzymes, in turn activates a spin-mediated information and energy transfer from the physical vacuum, the zero point field, to the biological entity. Consequently, the human organism isn't governed by heat transfer but by a light frequency modulated energy transformation from space background or physical vacuum to the living organism.

Cancer is a result of the disturbance of the enzyme mediated transformation of that energy. The affected cells lose their ability to communicate with other cells around them and they change not only their way of making energy but they become - for all practical purposes - separate unicellular entities that must divide and form a colony to survive. That colony is what we then see as the tumor, the visible manifestation of cancer.

The exact mechanism of that transformation and how the disturbance, once active, feeds back to cause these changes in the cancer cells, is explained - it is a rather technical subject - in Kremer's paper. We will have to wait for its publication to get the whole story.

Curcumin

In the meantime, however, we can say that curcumin, a natural substance in the family of polyphenols contained in turmeric root or curcuma longa and used as a natural coloring agent and a spice, has been found to be beneficial to cancer patients in research at the Anderson Cancer Research Center. See Doctor, Doctor A spice for life: curcumin.

Kremer explains that the anti-cancer properties of curcumin are a consequence of its ability to absorb photons in the violet spectral range of visible light at a wavelength of 415 nanometers. This particular property o