Arsenic and Multiple Myeloma

When 75-year-old John King met Dr. James Berenson he thought the end was near. Chemotherapy to treat multiple myeloma was making him sick and doctors said he only had two years left to live.

"Multiple myeloma is a bone marrow based cancer that strikes about 16,000 people a year," Dr. James Berenson, of the Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research, said.

It destroys bone and can lead to fractures. It also causes kidney disease.

"The treatment until recently has been largely chemo, steroids followed by transplantation of the patient's own blood cells," Dr. Berenson said.

Dr. Berenson says none of these treatments work well alone. But he discovered that the well known poison, arsenic, helps other therapies become more effective.

"Arsenic actually knocks out the cancer cells by taking away protein that drive the cancer and make the cancer resistant to other therapies," Dr. Berenson said.

Arsenic can cause fluid retention, weight gain and a potentially fatal heart rhythm, but researchers say with proper monitoring side effects can be controlled.

The arsenic regimen is given intravenously, but it becomes even more effective when combined with a dose of vitamin C.

Arsenic and vitamin C for the treatment of multiple myeloma is not FDA approved.

Researchers at the Institute for Myeloma & Bone Cancer Research found it worked on the cellular level and then on animals. King was willing to be part of a human clinical trial. Now six years after his diagnosis, his disease is stable.

"In fact, people are telling me now that I look better than when I got the disease ... thanks to Dr. Berensen, I'm still on the right side of the grass," King said.

Source: Denise Dador at ABC Inc.