Dr. David Fajgenbaum

So actually, if you inject lidocaine around a breast cancer tumor, there's really compelling evidence from a big clinical trial that was done in India

that you're going to reduce recurrence of breast cancer and also reduce mortality from breast cancer.

Now, this is an example where it's not total prevention because it's not like it's preventing the breast cancer in the first place, but it's preventing the breast cancer from coming back, which, of course, is so important because that's oftentimes what's so deadly about breast cancer.

And it's an example where lidocaine is this really cheap old substance where unless a nonprofit like ours or another nonprofit comes in

the work's just not gonna be done to push it forward.

And so we're really optimistic about that.

And we're actually also studying the role that lidocaine might play in other cancers as well.

Yeah, so the breakthroughs over the last 10 or 15 years really indicate that cancer occurs when mutations occur in the genomes of those specific cells.

And so they're called somatic mutations.

It basically means like we're all born with our own genetic makeup, but within the cells, let's say in your pancreas, a mutation occurs.

And that could be because of exposure to UV light or it could be from exposure to carcinogens in the environment, what you eat.

And those genetic changes, if they happen in a part of the genome that isn't that important, that cell just dies and you never even knew the mutation happened.

But if that mutation happens to happen in a part of the genome that's important for, say, cells to replicate or maybe to grow blood vessels, then that cell now has an advantage and then it accumulates more mutations and all of a sudden you have cancer.

And so it's sort of this...

it's sort of this random set of things that have to happen for you then to develop cancer.

And of course, you can do things in your life to reduce your risk of cancer by eating well and exercise and doing all the right stuff because that's gonna reduce the amount of those somatic mutations that occur to your cells.

But it is sort of this very much random thing, which is tough because that's why sometimes young kids get horrible cancers and it's also why you see cancers emerging in older kids

years because basically more of these mutations have occurred over the course of life.

Yeah, so the inflammation for sure, you know, the more you proliferate, the more your cells are proliferating, which often occurs in the setting of inflammation, the more chances there are for genetic

mistakes and basically mutations to occur because of the increased proliferation so so absolutely sugar i think um there's there's a lot of data that um sugar plays a really important role in cancer development and progression like once it starts i haven't seen as much on it like sort of causing it to start in the first place um but uh it's also really hard to keep track of all the research because there's just like so much work being done