High-Dose Intravenous Vitamin C Combined with Cytotoxic Chemotherapy in Patients with Advanced Cancer: A Phase I-II Clinical Trial

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 Conclusions

A chief interest of this early-phase cancer trial for general readers is the paradoxical nature of IVC therapy. Despite its biological and clinical plausibility, with only rare exceptions [11] it is ignored by conventional cancer investigators and funding agencies even as integrative and complementary cancer therapists prescribe it widely, without reporting the kind of clinical data that is normally gathered in conventional cancer drug development [27].
The present state of cancer chemotherapy is unsatisfactory. New cancer drugs continue to be developed and approved on the basis of marginal improvements in survival at an unsustainably high financial cost [59]. It would seem more rational for cancer investigators to attempt to improve the effectiveness of well known, inexpensive generic cancer chemotherapies by studying their clinical interactions with antioxidants, especially vitamin C [32]. However, the lack of financial reward and tainted association with alternative medicine could dissuade conventional investigators and funding agencies from seriously considering this approach. At present, the few cancer clinical trials of IVC being carried out are, like this one, small and supported by limited funding from integrative cancer foundations. Even if serious interest in funding and carrying out large, formal clinical trials were to develop, data are lacking as to which cancers and chemotherapy regimens to focus on.
The present study neither proves nor disproves IVC’s value in cancer therapy. The present data indicate it would be premature to attempt unfocused phase III clinical trials of this therapy at the present time. This study does provide useful information, and suggests a feasible, individual-case oriented strategy for evaluating plausible but poorly understood and unproven metabolic therapies in a mainstream academic environment that is uninterested in them [60]. If carried out in sufficient numbers, simple studies like this one could identify specific clusters of cancer type, IVC and chemotherapy regimen in which unexpectedly beneficial outcomes or exceptional responses occur frequently enough to justify focused clinical trials.