The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer
Dr. Otto Warburg
Lecture delivered to Nobel Laureates on June 30, 1966 at Lindau, Lake
Constance, Germany
There are prime and secondary causes of diseases. For example, the prime
cause of the plague is the plague bacillus, but secondary causes of the
plague are filth, rats, and the fleas that transfer the plague bacillus
from rats to man. By the prime cause of a disease, I mean one that is
found in every case of the disease.
Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. Almost
anything can cause cancer. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime
cause. The prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration
of oxygen (oxidation of sugar) in normal body cells by fermentation of
sugar.
All normal body cells meet their energy needs by respiration of oxygen,
whereas cancer cells meet their energy needs in great part by fermentation.
All normal body cells are thus obligate aerobes, whereas all cancer cells
are partial anaerobes. From the standpoint of the physics and chemistry
of life this difference between normal and cancer cells is so great that
one can scarcely picture a greater difference. Oxygen gas, the donor of
energy in plants and animals, is dethroned in the cancer cells and replaced
by the energy yielding reaction of the lowest living forms, namely the
fermentation of sugar.
In every case, during the cancer development, the oxygen respiration
always falls, fermentation appears, and the highly differentiated cells
are transformed into fermenting anaerobes, which have lost all their body
functions and retain only the now useless property of growth and replication.
Thus, when respiration disappears, life does not disappear, but the meaning
of life disappears, and what remains are growing machines that destroy
the body in which they grow.
All carcinogens impair respiration directly or indirectly by deranging
capillary circulation, a statement that is proven by the fact that no
cancer cell exists without exhibiting impaired respiration. Of course,
respiration cannot be repaired if it is impaired at the same time by a
carcinogen.
To prevent cancer it is therefore proposed first to keep the speed of
the blood stream so high that the venous blood still contains sufficient
oxygen; second, to keep high the concentration of hemoglobin in the blood;
third, to add always to the food, even of healthy people, the active groups
of the respiratory enzymes [see notes following this article]; and to
increase the doses of these groups, if a precancerous state has already
developed. If at the same time exogenous carcinogens are excluded rigorously,
then much of the endogenous cancer may be prevented today.
These proposals are in no way utopian. On the contrary, they may be
realized by everybody, everywhere, at any hour. Unlike the prevention
of many other diseases, the prevention of cancer requires no government
help, and not much money.
Many experts agree that one could prevent about 80% of all cancers in
man, if one could keep away the known carcinogens from the normal body
cells. But how can the remaining 20%, the so-called spontaneous cancers,
be prevented? It is indisputable that all cancer could be prevented if
the respiration of body cells were kept intact.
Nobody today can say that one does not know what the prime cause of
cancer is. On the contrary, there is no disease whose prime cause is better
known, so that today ignorance is no longer an excuse for avoiding measures
for prevention. That the prevention of cancer will come there is no doubt.
But how long prevention will be avoided depends on how long the prophets
of agnosticism will succeed in inhibiting the application of scientific
knowledge in the cancer field. In the meantime, millions of men and women
must die of cancer unnecessarily.
The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer with
two prefaces on prevention
Revised lecture at the meeting of the Nobel-Laureates
on June 30, 1966 at Lindau, Lake Constance, Germany
by Otto Warburg
Director, Max Planck-Institute for Cell Physiology, Berlin-Dahlem
English Edition by Dean Burk
National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
The Second Revised Edition
Published by Konrad Triltsch, Würzburg, Germany, 1969
Preface to the Second Revised German Edition
of the Lindau Lecture
(The way to prevention of cancer)
Since the Lindau lecture of June 1966 many physicians have examined
- not unsuccessfully - the practical consequences of the anaerobiosis
of cancer cells. The more who participate in these examinations, the sooner
will we know what can be achieved. It is a unique aspect of these examinations
that they can be carried out on human patients, on the largest scale,
without risk; whereas experiments on animals have been misleading many
times. The cure of human cancer will be the resultant of biochemistry
of cancer and of biochemistry of man.
A list of selected active groups of respiratory enzymes will soon be
published, to which we recently added cytohemin and d-amino-Levulinic
acid, the precursor of oxygen-transferring hemins. In the meantime commercial
vitamin preparations may be used that contain, besides other substances,
many active groups of the respiratory enzymes. Most of these may be added
to the food. Cytohemin and vitamin B 12 may be given subcutaneously. (A
synonym of "active group" is prosthetic" group of an enzyme.)
There exists no alternative today to the prevention of cancer
as proposed at Lindau. It is the way that attacks the prime cause
of cancer most directly and that is experimentally most developed. Indeed
millions of experiments in man, through the effectiveness of some vitamins,
have shown, that cell respiration is impaired if the active groups
of the respiratory enzymes are removed from the food; and that cell respiration
is repaired at once, if these groups are added again to the food. No
way can be imagined that is scientifically better founded to prevent and
cure a disease, the prime cause of which is an impaired respiration. Neither
genetic codes of anaerobiosis nor cancer viruses are alternatives today,
because no such codes and no such viruses in man have been discovered
so far; but anaerobiosis has been discovered. 8
What can be achieved by the active groups, when tumors have already
developed? The answer is doubtful, because tumors live in the body almost
anaerobically, that is under conditions that the active groups cannot
act.
On the other hand, because young metastases live in the body almost
aerobically, inhibition by the active groups should be possible. Therefore
we propose first to remove all compact tumors, which are the anaerobic
foci of the metastasis. Then the active group should be added to the food,
in the greatest possible amount, for many years, even for ever. This is
a promising task. If it succeeds, then cancer will be a harmless disease.
Moreover, we discovered recently a) in experiments with growing cancer
cells in vitro that very low concentrations of some selected active groups
inhibit fermentation and the growth of cancer cells completely, in the
course of a few days. From these experiments it may be concluded that
de-differentiated cells die if one tries to normalize their metabolism.
It is a result that is unexpected and that encourages the task
of inhibiting the growth of metastases with active enzyme groups.
a) In press in Hoppe-Seylers Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie
1967. 10 g riboflavin per ccm or 10 g d-Aminolevulinic acid inhibit in
vitro growth and fermentation completely but inhibit respiration less.
As expected, ascites cancer in vivo is not cured.
As emphasized, it is the first precondition of the proposed
treatment that all growing body cells be saturated with oxygen. It is
a second precondition that exogenous carcinogens be kept away, at least
during the treatment. All carcinogens impair respiration directly
or indirectly by deranging capillary circulation, a statement that is
proved by the fact that no cancer cell exists, the respiration of which
is not impaired. Of course, respiration cannot be repaired if it is impaired
at the same time by carcinogens.
It has been asked after the Lindau lecture why the repair of respiration
by the active groups of the enzymes was proposed as late as 1966, although
the fermentation of the cancer cell was discovered as early as 1923. Why
was so much time lost?
He who asked this questions ignored that in 1923 the chemical mechanism
of enzyme action was still a secret of living nature alone. 1 The first
active group of an enzyme, "Iron, the Oxygen-Transferring Part of
the Respiratory Enzyme" was discovered in 1942. There followed in
two decades the discoveries of the O2-transferring metalloproteins, the
flavoproteins and the pyridinproteins, a period that was concluded by
the "Heavy Metals as Prosthetic Groups of Enzymes" 3 and by
the "Hydrogen Transferring Enzymes" 4 in 1947 to 1949.
Moreover, during the first decades after 1923 glycolysis and anaerobiosis
were constantly confused, so that nobody knew what was specific for tumors.
The three famous and decisive discoveries of DEAN BURK and colleagues
5 of the National Cancer Institute at Bethesda were of the years 1941,
1956 and 1964: first, that the metabolism of the regenerating liver, which
grows more rapidly than most tumors, is not cancer metabolism, but perfect
aerobic embryonic metabolism; second, that cancer cells, descended in
vitro from one single normal cell, were in vivo the more malignant, the
higher the fermentation rate; third, that in vivo growing hepatomas, produced
in vivo by different carcinogens, were in vivo the more malignant, the
higher the fermentation rate. Furthermore, the very unexpected and fundamental
fact, that tissue culture is carcinogenic and that a too low oxygen pressure
is the intrinsic cause were discovered 6-8 in the years 1927 to 1966. Anaerobiosis
of cancer cells was an established fact only since 1960 when methods were
developed 7 to measure the oxygen pressure inside of tumors in the living
body.
This abridged history shows that even the greatest genius would not
have been able to propose in 1923, what was proposed at Lindau in 1966.
As unknown as the prime cause of cancer was in 1923 was the possibility
to prevent it.
Life without oxygen in a living world that has been created by oxygen
9 was so unexpected that it would have been too much to ask that anaerobiosis
of cancer cells should be accepted at once by all scientists. But most
of the resistance disappeared when at Lindau it was explained that on
the basis of anaerobiosis there is now a real chance to get rid of this
terrible disease, if man is willing to submit to experiments and facts.
It is true that more than 40 years were necessary to learn how to do it.
But 40 years is a short time in the history of science.10
Wiesenhof über Idar-Oberstein, August 1967 OTTO WARBURG
Two years after the Lindau lecture LINUS PAULING (Science Vol. 160,
Page 265, 1968) proposed to control mental diseases by adding to the food
the active groups of respiratory enzymes. But here the experimental basis
was lacking. No mental disease is known so far, the prime cause of which
is an impairment of the respiration of brain cells.
Preface to the First edition (Prevention of endogenous
cancer)
Most experts agree that nearly 80% of cancers could be prevented, if
all contact with the known exogenous carcinogens could be avoided. But
how can the remaining 20%, the endogenous or so-called spontaneous cancers,
be prevented? Because no cancer cell exists, the respiration of which
is intact 1, it cannot be disputed that cancer could be prevented if the
respiration of the body cells would be kept intact.
Today we know two methods to influence cell respiration.1 The first
is to decrease the oxygen pressure in growing cells. If it is so much
decreased that the oxygen transferring enzymes are no longer saturated
with oxygen, respiration can decrease irreversibly and normal cells can
be transformed into facultative anaerobes.
The second method to influence cell respiration in vivo is to add the
active groups of the respiratory enzymes to the food of man. Lack of these
groups impairs cell respiration and abundance of these groups repairs
impaired cell respiration - a statement that is proved by the fact that
these groups are necessary vitamins for man. 2
To prevent cancer it is therefore proposed first to keep the speed of
the blood stream so high that the venous blood still contains sufficient
oxygen; second, to keep high the concentration of hemoglobin in the blood;
third to add always to the food, even of healthy people, the active groups
of the respiratory enzymes; and to increase the doses of these groups,
if a precancerous state 3 has already developed. If at the same time exogenous
carcinogens are excluded rigorously, then most cancers may be prevented
today.
These proposals are in no way utopian. On the contrary, they may be
realized by everybody, everywhere, at any hour. Unlike the prevention
of many other diseases the prevention of cancer requires no government
help, and no extra money.
Wiesenhof, August 1966 OTTO WARBURG
The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer
(Revised Lindau Lecture)
By OTTO WARBURG, Director, Max Planck Institute for Cell Physiology,
Berlin-Dahlem, Germany
English Edition by DEAN BURK, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland
(Note by DEAN BURK: Adapted from a lecture originally delivered by O.
Warburg at the 1966 annual meeting of Nobelists at Lindau, Germany. O.
Warburg won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1931 for his discovery of the
oxygen transferring enzyme of cell respiration, and was voted a second
Nobel Prize in 1944 for his discovery of the active groups of the hydrogen
transferring enzymes. Many universities, like Harvard, Oxford, Heidelberg
have offered him honorary degrees. He is a Foreign member of the Royal
Society of London, a Knight of the Order of Merit founded by Frederick
the Great, and was awarded the Great Cross with Star and Shoulder Ribbon
of the Bundesrepublik. His main interests are Chemistry and Physics of
Life. In both fields no scientist has been more successful.)
There are prime and secondary causes of diseases. For example, the prime
cause of the plaque is the plaque bacillus, but secondary causes of the
plaque are filth, rats, and the fleas that transfer the plaque bacillus
from rats to man. By a prime cause of a disease I mean one that is found
in every case of the disease.
Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But,
even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words,
the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration
of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar. All
normal body cells meet their energy needs by respiration of oxygen, whereas
cancer cells meet their energy needs in great part by fermentation. All
normal body cells are thus obligate aerobes, whereas all cancer cells
are partial anaerobes. From the standpoint of the physics and chemistry
of life this difference between normal and cancer cells is so great that
one can scarcely picture a greater difference. Oxygen gas, the donor of
energy in plants and animals is dethroned in the cancer cells and replaced
by an energy yielding reaction of the lowest living forms, namely, a fermentation
of glucose.
The key to the cancer problem is accordingly the energetics of life,
which has been the field of work of the Dahlem institute since its initiation
by the Rockefeller Foundation about 1930. In Dahlem the oxygen transferring
and hydrogen transferring enzymes were discovered and chemically isolated.
In Dahlem the fermentation of cancer cells was discovered decades ago;
but only in recent years has is been demonstrated that cancer cells can
actually grow in the body almost with only the energy of fermentation.
Only today can one submit, with respect to cancer, all the experiments
demanded by PASTEUR and KOCH as proof of the prime causes of a disease.
If it is true that the replacement of oxygen-respiration by fermentation
is the prime cause of cancer, then all cancer cells without exception
must ferment, and no normal growing cell ought to exist that ferments
in the body.
An especially simple and convincing experiment performed by the Americans
MALMGREN and FLANEGAN confirms the view. If one injects tetanus spores,
which can germinate only at very low oxygen pressures, into the blood
of healthy mice, the mice do not sicken with tetanus, because the spores
find no place in the normal body where the oxygen pressure is sufficiently
low. Likewise, pregnant mice do not sicken when injected with the tetanus
spores, because also in the growing embryo no region exists where the
oxygen pressure is sufficiently low to permit spore germination. However,
if one injects tetanus spores into the blood of tumor-bearing mice, the
mice sicken with tetanus, because the oxygen pressure in the tumors can
be so low that the spores can germinate. These experiments demonstrate
in a unique way the anaerobiosis of cancer cells and the non-anaerobiosis
of normal cells, in particular the non-anaerobiosis of growing embryos.
The Fermentation of Morris Hepatomas
A second type of experimentation demonstrates a quantitative connection
between fermentation of tumors and growth rate of tumors.
If one injects rats with cancer-inducing substances of different activities,
one can create, as HAROLD MORRIS of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda
has found, liver cancers (hepatomas) of very different degrees
of malignancy. Thus, one strain of tumor may double its mass
in three days, another strain may require 30 days. Recently DEAN BURK
and MARK WOODS 3), also of the National Cancer Institute, measured the
in vitro rates of anaerobic fermentation in different lines of these hepatomas,
and obtained a curve (Fig. 1) that shows a quantitative relationship
between fermentation and growth rate, and therefore between fermentation
and malignancy, in these various tumor strains. The fermentation increases
with the malignancy, and indeed the fermentation increases even faster
than the malignancy.
Special interest attaches to the fermentation of the most slowly growing
hepatomas, because several investigators in the United States believed
that they had found *) that such tumors had no fermentation; that is that
anaerobiosis cannot be the prime cause of cancer.
*) For example see C. H. BÖHRINGER SON, Ingelheim am Rhein, the
factory Work - Journal "Das Medizinische Prisma" , Vol. 13,
1963. Here a lecture of VAN POTTER (Madison, Wisconsin) is reprinted where
owing to the slow-growing Morris-tumors anaerobiosis as prime cause of
cancer is rejected and the lack of "intracellular feeding back"
is claimed to be the real cause of cancer.
Fig. 1. Velocity of growth and fermentation of the Morris-Hepatomas,
according to DEAN BURK and MARK WOODS
DEAN BURK and MARK WOODS saw immediately from their curves that in the
region of the zero point the rate of fermentation was so small that it
could no longer be measured by the usual gross methodology employed by
the aforementioned workers, whereas in the same region the smallest growth
rate was always easily measurable. BURK and WOODS saw, in other words,
that in the region of the zero point of their curves the growth test was
more sensitive than the usual fermentation test. With refined and adequate
methods for measuring fermentation of sugar (glucose) they found, what
any physical chemist after a glance at the curve would realize, that even
the most slow-growing Morris hepatomas fermented sugar.
The results of DEAN BURK and MARK WOODS were confirmed and extended
by other workers with independent methods. PIETRO GULLINO, also in Bethesda,
developed a perfusion method whereby a Morris hepatoma growing in the
living animal could be perfused for long periods of time, even weeks,
by means of a single artery and single vein, and the blood entering and
leaving any given tumor could be analyzed. GULLINO found with this method
that the slow-growing Morris hepatomas always produced fermentation lactic
acid during their growth. This was in contrast to liver, where, as known
since the days of CLAUDE BERNARD, lactic acid is not produced but consumed
by liver; the difference between liver and Morris tumors in vivo is thus
infinite (+ vs. -). GULLINO further found that tumors grow in vivo with
diminished oxygen consumption. In summary, GULLINO's findings indicate
that the slow-growing Morris hepatomas are partial anaerobes.
SILVIO FIALA, a biochemist at the University of Southern California,
found that not only did the slow-growing hepatomas produce lactic acid,
but also that the number of their oxygen-respiring grana was reduced.
The slow-growing Morris hepatomas are therefore far removed from having
refuted the anaerobiosis of tumors. On the contrary, they are the best
proof of this distinctive characteristic. For forty years cancer
investigators have searched for a cancer that did not ferment. When finally
a non-fermenting tumor appeared to have been found in the slow-growing
Morris tumors, it was shown to be a methodological error.
Transformation of Embryonic Metabolism into Cancer Metabolism
A third type of experiment, from the institute in Dahlem with coworkers
GAWEHN, GEISSLER and LORENZ, is likewise highly pertinent. Having established
that anaerobiosis is that property of cancer cells that distinguishes
them from all normal body cells, we attacked the question, namely, how
normal body cells may become transformed into anaerobes 6)7)8).
If one puts embryonic mouse cells into a suitable culture medium saturated
with physiological oxygen pressures, they will grow outside the mouse
body, in vitro, and indeed as pure aerobes, with a pure oxygen respiration,
without a trace of fermentation. However, if during the growth one provides
an oxygen pressure so reduced that the oxygen respiration is partially
inhibited, the purely aerobic metabolism of the mouse embryonic cells
is quantitatively altered within 48 hours, in the course of two
cell divisions, into the metabolism characteristic of fermenting cancer
cells. Fig. 2 illustrates the very simple experimental procedure
involved.
If one then brings such cells, in which during their growth
under reduced oxygen pressure a cancer cell metabolism has been produced,
back under the original high oxygen pressure, and allows the cell to grow
further, the cancer metabolism remains. The transformation of
embryonic cell metabolism into cancer cell metabolism can thus be irreversible,
and important result, since the origin of cancer cells from normal body
cells is an irreversible process. It is equally important that these body
cells whose metabolism has thus been transformed into cancer metabolism
now continue to grow in vitro as facultative anaerobes. The duration of
our experiments is still too limited to have yielded results of tests
of inoculation of such cells back into mice, but according to all previous
indications such cells will later grow as anaerobes upon transplantation
into animals.
In any case, these experiments belong to the most important experiments
in the field of cancer investigation since the discovery of the fermentation
of tumors. For cancer metabolism, heretofore, measured so many
thousand of times, has now been induced artificially in body cells by
the simplest conceivable experimental procedure, and with this
artificially induced cancer metabolism the body cells divide and grow
as anaerobes in vitro*).
*) The experiments were at once repeated, when they were published,
of course without acknowledgment. See for example Th. Goodfriend, D. M.
Sokol and N. O. Kaplan, J. molecular Biol. 15, 18, 1966.
In recent months we have further developed our experimental arrangements
so that we can measure manometrically the oxygen respiration and fermentation
of the growing mouse embryonic cells during the metabolic transformation.
Fig. 3 shows the experimental arrangement. We find by such experiments
that 35 percent inhibition of oxygen respiration already suffices
to bring about such a transformation during cell growth**). Oxygen
pressures that inhibit respiration 35 percent can occur at the end of
blood capillaries in living animals, so that the possibility
arises that cancer may result when too low oxygen pressures occur during
cell growth in animal bodies.
**) These experiments show, like the curve of Dean Burk and Mark Woods
in Fig. 1, that it is more correct to designate tumor cells as "partial
anaerobes" rather than "facultative anaerobes". A
body cell is transformed into a tumor cell if only a part of the respiration
is replaced by fermentation.
Fig. 2. Method to transform embryonic metabolism into cancer metabolism
by decreasing the oxygen pressure. The induction of cancers by solid materials
injected into animals is a further experimental indication of this possibility.
If one implants discs of solid substances under the skin of rats, the
discs will soon be surrounded by capsules of living tissue that will be
nourished with blood vessels from the hypodermis. Sarcomas very frequently
develop in these capsules. It is immaterial whether the solid discs are
chemically plastics, gold, or ivory, etc. What produces the cancer is
not the chemical nature of the solid discs, but the special kind of blood
nourishment supplied to the tissue encapsulating the discs. This blood
provision varies with the site and in adequacy within a given animal,
and induces cancer from the low oxygen pressure in the encapsulating disc.
Fig. 3. Method to measure manometrically respiration and fermentation
during the transformation of embryonic into cancer metabolism*)
*) The vessels are not shaken, because shaking inhibits growth. Therefore,
the oxygen pressure in the liquid phase at the bottom of the vessels is
much lower than in the gas phase. For example, when the oxygen pressure
in the gas phase was 2000 mm H2O it was 130 mm H2O at the bottom of the
vessels. (O. Warburg, A. Geissler and S. Lorenz, Zeitschr. Für Naturforschung
20b, 1070, 1965.)
Thermodynamics
If a lowered oxygen pressure during cell growth may cause cancer, or,
more generally, if any inhibition of respiration during growth may cause
cancer, then a next problem is to show why reduced respiration induces
cancer. Since we already know that with a lowering of respiration fermentation
results, we can re-express our question: Why does cancer result
if oxygen-respiration is replaced by fermentation?
The early history of life on our planet indicates that life existed
on earth before the earth's atmosphere contained free oxygen gas.
The living cells must therefore have been fermenting cells then, and,
as fossils show, they were undifferentiated single cells. Only when free
oxygen appeared in the atmosphere - some billion years ago - did the higher
development of life set in, to produce the plant and animal kingdoms from
the fermenting, undifferentiated single cells. What the philosophers of
life have called "Evolution créatrice" has been and is
therefore the work of oxygen.
The reverse process, the dedifferentiation of life, takes place today
in greatest amount before our eyes in cancer development, which is another
expression for dedifferentiation. To be sure, cancer development takes
place even in the presence of free oxygen gas in the atmosphere, but this
oxygen may not penetrate in sufficient quantity into the growing body
cells, or the respiratory apo-enzymes of the growing body cells may not
be saturated with the active groups. In any case, during the cancer
development the oxygen - respiration always falls, fermentation appears,
and the highly differentiated cells are transformed to fermenting anaerobes,
which have lost all their body functions and retain only the now useless
property of growth. Thus, when respiration disappears, life does
not disappear, but the meaning of life disappears, and what remains are
growing machines that destroy the body in which they grow.
But why oxygen differentiates and why lack of oxygen dedifferentiates?
Nobody would dispute that the development of plants and animals
and man from unicellular anaerobes is the most improbable process of all
processes in the world. Thus there is no doubt, that EINSTEIN descended
from a unicellular fermenting organism - to illustrate the miracle, molecular
O2 achieved. But according to the thermodynamics of Boltzmann, improbable
processes require work to take place. It requires work to produce temperature
differences in a uniformly temperatured gas; whereas the equalization
of such temperature differences is a spontaneous process that does not
require work. It is the oxygen - respiration that provides in life this
work, and dedifferentiation begins at once when respiration is inhibited
in any way. In the language of thermodynamics, differentiation represents
a forced steady state, whereas dedifferentiation - that is, cancer - is
the true equilibrium state. Or, illustrated by a picture: the differentiated
body cell is like a ball on an inclined plane, which, would roll down
except for the work of oxygen-respiration always preventing this. If oxygen
respiration is inhibited, the ball rolls down the plane to the level of
dedifferentiation.
But why respiratory energy and not fermentation energy can differentiate,
whereas in general, for example in growth, respiratory energy and fermentation
energy are equivalent? Obviously, there would be no cancer if there were
not this discrimination of fermentation energy, that is, if fermentation
like respiration could differentiate. Then, when respiration is replaced
by fermentation, fermentation would take over differentiation, and a high
state of differentiation would be maintained even in the fermenting body
cells.
Chemistry
Physics cannot explain why the two kinds of energy are not equivalent
in differentiation; but chemistry may explain it. Biochemists know that
both respiration energy and fermentation energy do their work as phosphate
energy, but the ways of phosphorylation are different. If one applies
this knowledge to carcinogenesis, it seems that only oxidative phosphorylation
but not fermentative phosphorylation can differentiate, a result, that
may in future explain the mechanism of differentiation.
Yet Biochemistry can explain already today why fermentation arises,
when respiration decreases. Figure 4 shows that the pathways of respiration
and fermentation are common as far as pyruvic acid. Then the pathways
diverge. The end product of fermentation is reached by one single reaction,
the reduction of pyruvic acid by dihydro-nicotinamide to lactic acid.
On the other hand, the end products of the oxidation of pyruvic acid,
H2O and CO2, are only reached after many additional reactions. Therefore,
when cells are harmed, it is probable that first respiration is harmed.
In this way the frequency of cancer is explained by reasons of probability.
To sum up:
- Impairment of respiration is more frequent than impairment of fermentation
because respiration is more complicated than fermentation.
- The impaired respiration can be easily replaced by fermentation, because
both processes have a common catalyst, the nicotinamide.
- The consequence of the replacement of respiration by fermentation
is mostly glycolysis, with death of the cells by lack of energy. Only
if the energy of fermentation is equivalent to the lost energy of respiration,
is the consequence anaerobiosis. Glycolysis means death by fermentation,
anaerobiosis means life by fermentation.
- Cancer arises, because respiration, but not fermentation, can maintain
and create the high differentiation of body cells.
To conclude the discussion on the prime cause of cancer, the virus-theory
of cancer may be mentioned. It is the most cherished topic of the philosophers
of cancer. If it were true, it would be possible to prevent and cure cancer
by the methods of virology; and all carcinogens could be eaten or smoked
freely without any danger, if only contact with the cancer virus would
be avoided.
It is true that some virus-caused cancer b) occur in animals, but no
one sure human virus-cancer has been observed so far, whereas innumerable
substances cause cancer without viruses in animals and man. Thus viruses
do not meet the demands of Pasteur, that is must be possible to trace
the prime cause in every case of the disease. Therefore science classifies
viruses as remote causes of cancer, leading to anaerobiosis, the prime
cause, that meets the demands of Pasteur.
b) The chicken Rous sarcoma, which is labeled today as a virus tumor,
ferments glucose and lives as a partial anaerobe like all tumors. O. WARBURG,
Bioch. Zeitschrift 160, 307, 1925; F. WIND, Klinische Wochenschrift, Nr.
30, 1926.
Many may remember how anaerobiosis as prime cause of cancer was recently
disputed emphatically, when one single cancer - the slow Morris hepatomas
- was believed (wrongly) to lack in fermentation. In contrast the virus
theory is adhered to although all cancers of man are lacking in virus-origin.
This means the surrender of the principles of Pasteur and the relapse
into bygone times of medicine.
Applications
Of what use is it to know the prime cause of cancer? Here is an example.
In Scandinavian countries there occurs a cancer of throat and esophagus
whose precursor is the so-called Plummer-Vinson syndrome. This syndrome
can be healed when one adds to the diet the active groups of respiratory
enzymes, for example: iron salts, riboflavin, nicotinamide, and pantothenic
acid. When one can heal the precursor of a cancer, one can prevent
this cancer. According to ERNEST WYNDER 3) of the Sloan-Kettering Institute
for Cancer Research in New York, the time has come when one can exterminate
this kind of cancer with the help of the active groups of the respiratory
enzymes.
It is of interest in this connection that with the help of one of these
active groups of the respiratory enzymes, namely nicotinamide, tuberculosis
can be healed quite as well as with streptomycin, but without the side
effects of the latter c). Since the sulfonamides and antibiotics, this
discovery made in 1945 is the most important event in the field of chemotherapy
generally, and encourages, in association with the experiences in Scandinavia,
efforts to prevent cancer by dietary addition of large amounts of the
active groups of the respiratory enzymes.
Since there can scarcely be overdosage, such experiments can do no harm.
c) V. CHORINE: C. R. sci. Paris, 220, 150 (1945). - H. FUST and A. STUDER,
Schweizerische Z. für allgemeine Pathologie, Band 14; Fasc 5 (1951).
I would like to go further and propose always making dietary
additions of large amounts of the active groups of the respiratory enzymes
after successful operations when there is danger from metastatic growths.
One could indeed never succeed in redifferentiating the dedifferentiated
cancer cells, since during the short duration of human life the probability
of such a back-differentiation is zero. But one might increase the respiration
of growing metastases, and thereby inhibit their fermentation, and - on
the basis of the curve of DEAN BURK and MARK WOODS obtained with the Morris
hepatomas - thereby inhibit the growth of metastases to such an extent
that they might become as harmless as the so-called "sleeping"
cancer cells in the prostates of elderly men.
A Second Example of Application
The physicist MANFRED VON ARDENNE has recently attacked the problem
of the therapy of cancer. ARDENNE discovered that cancer cells owing to
their fermentation, are more acid - inside and on their surface
- than normal cells and hence are more sensitive to high temperatures.
On this basis, he and his medical colleagues have treated cancer
patients, after surgical removal of the primary tumors, by raising
the body temperature of the patients to about 109º Fahrenheit for
an hour, in the hope that the metastases will then be killed
or their growth so slowed up as to become harmless. It is not yet decided
whether this idea can be described as a practical success. But the provisional
work of ARDENNE is already of great significance in a field where hopes
of conventional chemotherapy have been dimmed but might be brightened
by combination with extreme or moderate hyperthermy.
A third application.
According to an estimate by K. H. Bauer of the Cancer Institute in Heidelberg,
at least one million of the now living twenty five million male inhabitants
of West Germany will die of cancer of the respiratory tract; still more
will die from other cancer. When one considers that cancer is a permanent
menace, one realizes that cancer has become one of the most dangerous
menaces in the history of medicine.
Many experts agree that one could prevent about 80% of all cancers in
man, if one could keep away the known carcinogens from the normal body
cells. This prevention of cancer might involve no expenses, and especially
would require little further research to bring about cancer prevention
in up to 80 percent *).
*) Since this estimate was published, some thought 80% even to low.
Yet prevention remained taboo and early diagnosis was
the only consolation that was offered.
Why then does it happen that in spite of all this so little is done
towards the prevention of cancer? The answer has always been that one
does not know what cancer or the prime cause of cancer be, and that one
cannot prevent something that is not known.
But nobody today can say that one does not know what cancer and its
prime cause be. On the contrary, there is no disease whose prime
cause is better known, so that today ignorance is no longer an
excuse that one cannot do more about prevention. That prevention of cancer
will come there is no doubt, for man wishes to survive. But how long prevention
will be avoided depends on how long the prophets of agnosticism
will succeed in inhibiting the application of scientific knowledge in
the cancer field. In the meantime, millions of men and women must die
of cancer unnecessarily.
Literature to Preface of Second Edition:
- WILLSTAETTER, WIELAND and EULER, Lectures on enzymes at the centenary
of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher. Berichte der Deutschen
Chemischen Gesellschaft, 55, 3583, 1922. The 3 lectures of the 3 chemists
show that in the year 1922 the action of all enzymes was still a mystery.
No active group of any enzyme was known.
- OTTO WARBURG, Biochem. Zeitschrift, 152, 479, 1924.
- OTTO WARBURG, Heavy Metals as prosthetic groups of enzymes, Clarendon
Press, Oxford, 1949.
- OTTO WARBURG, Wasserstoffübertragende Fermente, Verlag Werner
Sänger, Berlin, 1948.
- DEAN BURK, 1941. On the specificity of glycolysis in malignant liver
tumors as compared with homologous adult or growing liver tissues. In
Symposium of Respiratory Enzymes, Univ. of Wisconsin Press. pp. 235-245,1942.
DEAN BURK, Science 123,314,1956. Woods, M. W., Sandford, K. K., Burk,
D., and Earle, W. R. J. National Cancer Institute 23, 1079-1088, 1959.
DEAN BURK, Burk, D., Woods, M. and Hunter, J. On the Significance of
Glucolysis for Cancer Growth, with Special Reference to Morris Rat Hepatomas.
Journ. National Cancer Institute 38, 839-863, 1967.
- O. WARBURG und F. KUBOWITZ, Bioch. Z. 189, 242, 1927; H. GOLDBLATT
und G. CAMERON, J. Exper. Med. 97, 525, 1953.
- O. WARBURG, 17. Mosbacher Kolloquium, April 1966. Verlag Springer,
Heidelberg, 1966.
- O. WARBURG, K. GAWEHN, A. W. GEISSLER, D. KAYSER and S. LORENZ, Klinische
Wochenschrift 43, 289, 1965.
- O. WARBURG, Oxygen, The Creator of Differentiation, Biochemical Energetics,
Academic Press, New York, 1966.
- O. WARBURG, New Methods of Cell Physiology, Georg Thieme, Stuttgart,
and Interscience Publishers, New York, 1962.
Respiratory Enzymes:
- Niacin (made in the intestines)
- Vitamin B2 (riboflavin)
- Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid)
- Iron salts (the oxygen transferring part of the respiratory enzymes)
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