Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a crippling yet common condition that adversely affects patients' quality of life while undergoing treatment. There are currently no efficient pharmaceutical treatments for the collection of symptoms that make up CRF.

Researchers from Yale School of Medicine's Yale Cancer Center recently found that the metabolism-targeting drug dichloroacetate (DCA) effectively reduced CRF in mice without interfering with cancer treatments. These results pave the way for future CRF study, perhaps leading to new treatments for patients.

The American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism published the results on October 2.

Senior author Rachel Perry, a member of Yale Cancer Center, stated, "This study marks dichloroacetate as the initial intervention, notably the first metabolism-focused approach, capable of preventing the entire spectrum of cancer-related fatigue in preclinical models."

The researchers used tumor-bearing mouse models to test DCA's effectiveness in treating cancer-related fatigue in melanoma patients.

The team found that DCA had no effect on tumor growth rates or chemotherapy or immunotherapy effectiveness in two mouse cancer models. In addition, DCA significantly preserved physical ability and drive in mice with advanced tumors.

The data indicates that DCA treatment may yield numerous benefits, such as decreasing oxidative stress in the muscle tissue of mice with tumors. The researchers believe that, in the future, DCA could represent a transformative approach when employed as an adjuvant therapy for addressing cancer-related fatigue.

“We hope that this research will provide the bedrock for future clinical trials using dichloroacetate — an FDA-approved drug for another indication (lactic acidosis) — to treat the debilitating syndrome of cancer-related fatigue,” said Perry, who is also an assistant professor of medicine (endocrinology) and of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale School of Medicine.