Pa. Study to Probe Vitamin C, Cancer

Researchers are preparing for clinical trials examining whether high doses of vitamin C, administered intravenously, can slow the spread of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center, along with the National Institutes of Health, plan to begin enrollment within the next few weeks of 20 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients who have failed standard therapy.

Each study participant will be given varied intravenous doses of vitamin C three times a week during the study, expected to last from 4 to 6 months, the hospital said Wednesday.

''This is a very unique study for a set of patients who have really run out of options,'' said Dr. Daniel Monti, director of Jefferson's Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine and study's lead investigator.

Monti said intravenous dosing can get as much as 70 times the normal amount of vitamin C in the bloodstream. When the vitamin is taken orally, the body can only absorb so much and the rest passes through the system.

''It is these high blood levels that are required to get the mechanism of action, vitamin C converting to hydrogen peroxide around the cancer cells, to occur,'' he said. Earlier investigations have found that hydrogen peroxide generated by vitamin C megadoses can selectively kill some cancer cells while leaving normal cells alone, he said.

Other benefits of vitamin C as a potential therapy would be its low cost and low toxicity, he said.