Alcohol-abuse Drug Cures Cancer

Recently, Nature published a paper on how an old drug helps to cure cancer (if you don’t have subscription to Nature, read this news article to get some sense about it).
I am fascinated by this idea that can potentially help millions of cancer patients. The drug is well tested and cheap. It can have a huge impact if there can be more clinical trials on its effect on different cancers. I am not a biologist nor a doctor. So I want to explain in layman’s terms why the alcohol-abuse drug, Antabuse, works to increase the survival rate of cancer patients.

Imagine the body is a neighborhood. Each cell is a household. The healthy cells have regular activity and produce a normal amount of garbage. The cancer cells, on the other hand, are hyperactive neighbors. They party all the time and produce a massive amount of garbage. Therefore, their garbage bin is always full. Luckily (or unfortunately), the waste management company is very productive. The garbage collection truck (p97-NPL4) is driving around 24x7. p97-NPL4 will collect the waste whenever it finds a full garbage bin.

The alcohol-abuse drug, Antabuse, is an organization whose goal is to save the earth from the ever-increasing garbage landfills. They have an aggressive approach — their volunteers drive around the neighborhood. If Antabuse sees a full garbage bin, he/she will post a “Garbage person” tag on their website for that household. To be fair, Antabuse tags everyone that produces garbage, including the healthy cells.

The garbage collection truck driver (p97-NPL4) decides that he can do something to help the earth. He downloaded the Antabuse’s app that shows how many “Garbage person” tags are on a cell. If the cell has an extraordinary number of tags compared to its neighbors, p97-NPL4 will not collect waste from that cell. “Let these junkies bury in their waste.”, the driver says. Effectively, Antabuse blocks the p97-NPL4 mechanism from collection waste from a cancer cell.
To everyone’s joy, the cancer cells are buried in their own waste, and the cancer cells either died or become inactive. In this way, the drug controls the spread of the cancer cells, and the cancer patient lives longer.