Suezoled said:
However, I am still bothered by the statement of cancer cells not liking oxygen, while non-cancerous cells "love it." As it was explained to me, the growth of the cancer would be slowed because its getting the oxygen it requires, so it doesn't need to tap into more blood vessels to maintain itself.
Well, the bottom line is that we don't really understand all the ways a cell mutates when it mutates. Mutations happen all the time. The vast majority of the time, they are either corrected (e.g., at the intranuclear DNA level by known repair mechanisms such as p53 [a.k.a. "the guardian of the genome"], etc.) or the mutation is lethal to the cell and the cell dies without propagating. It's those pesky changes that allow the cell to live and, worse, spread.
So, it's not entirely unreasonable that a normal human cell could mutate into microaerophilic cancer cell that would prefer low oxygen tension, a more acidic environment, etc. But, whether or not this has been experimentally proven, I'm not sure. This would fall more into the realm of speculation.
What is known is that some cancers grow so fast that they outgrow their blood supply. The result is a tumor with a necrotic, dying or dead center. This is when new blood cells are recruited to the area. In effect, one could theorize that, if you were to provide sufficient oxygen to support the normal, non-cancerous cellular architecture, then new blood vessels would not be recruited towards the tumor. The tumor would then "choke" because it was not getting enough blood supply in it's periphery. It would then die.
In practice, I think this is a pipe dream.
It makes more sense to use HBO in palliation, where super-saturating oxygen into the tissues prevents the areas being choked of oxygen by tumor invasion and impingement (which is what really happens) will result in better perfusion of the existing supporting tissue (or stroma) and allow the body the opportunity to clear the debris from the tumor processes. Again, this won't stop the tumor from growing, but it will help with the pain.
At least, that's the theory...
As far as hyperbaric oxygen killing cancer cells, I think this falls more into the realm of what looks good on the drawing board (i.e., creating superoxide radicals that can attack celluar membranes) than it does in practice (such radicals are not tumor-specific and, therefore, not any less toxic than other anti-cancer chemotherapies).
Just offering nothing more than my scientifically-based speculations here.
-TT
