TAMPA, FL -- All this month, we've been taking action against breast cancer along with our partners at Watson Clinic in Lakeland. Now we bring you a story about finding a cure.
Doctor David Vesely makes rounds at Tampa's VA hospital, checking up on a diabetes patient who uses an insulin pump to survive. Afterwards, hidden away in lab 229 in the research center of the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital, the endocrinologist works on a project he hopes will change modern medicine.
Doctor Vesely and his team have been dropping heart hormones onto cancer cells in petri dishes, obliterating cancer within 24 hours. "The cells actually blow apart."
So how did a gland man in a VA hospital discover a possible cure for cancer? A tragic death gave birth to his discovery.
"The breast cancer spread up and down her spine. She was paralyzed from the neck down." Motivated by his wife's death, Vesely made a promise to one of his teenage sons to slay the demon disease that ravaged their beautiful mother.
As an endocrinologist, Dr. Vesely studied heart hormones or peptides that stopped normal heart cells from proliferating. "So it wasn't a big jump from there to think if they do that in normal cells maybe they could keep cancer from growing."
Vesely and his son put that theory to the test in the VA research lab where, he says, up to 97 percent of the cancer cells died.
When asked if seeing the cells die the first time blew his mind, Dr. Vesely said "Yes, it did. We thought it must be lab error."
But when the cancer tumors also disappeared in mice, Dr. Vesely says "Once we started curing these animals, we knew it would be good."
Vesely started publishing papers and accolades started pouring in. Like this one from Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii. "Dr. Vesely's research achievements, accomplished as a federal employee, are a major breakthrough that could help save millions of lives."
The next step? Try it on humans!
Dr. Vesely says the University of South Florida and the Veteran's Hospital sold the licensing rights to a California company, who has yet to raise 25 million dollars to start human clinical trials.
Linda Hurtado asked him, "You get e-mails from people who are dying; begging you, right, to try it on them. So, what is holding you back? I know there are laws, but explain that to us."
Dr. Vesely replied, "The people who are going to do the clinical trials in California are the only ones, along with the FDA, who can decide if a doctor can do that. I suppose if you tried anything experimental you'd go to federal prison.
So he waits, trying the heart hormones on different cancers: pancreatic, colon, lung. But only in the research lab.
His vision is to one day infuse heart hormones into cancer patients the same way this diabetic's pump infuses insulin into body.
So why isn't someone jumping up and down raising their hands and saying "Over here! I'll fund it. Let's cure cancer!"
Dr. Vesely says, "until they do humans trials, it's good to be skeptical. It is."
But is he excited nonetheless?
"Oh yeah. It's going to work. I'm pretty sure."
You may be asking yourself, if we all have these heart hormones and they kill cancer, why do get cancer in the first place? Dr. Vesely says they'd have to give a person one thousand times the amount your body normally produces to kill the cancer.
The good news, so far the worst side effects he's seen are dehydration and lowering blood pressure. Both can be treated.
