Anti-Cancer Effects of Ascorbic Acid and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in vitro

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., projected to take 595,690 lives in 2016 and cost the nation over 125 billion dollars. To effectively reduce these detrimental losses, non-toxic, low-cost therapies should be further examined to supplement the standard of care. An anti-carcinogenic, non-toxic therapy currently under investigation is high dose ascorbic acid (AA). AA can function as a pro-oxidant at pharmacological levels, delivering H2O2 to tumorous tissue upon oxidation and initiating cell death. At pharmacological concentrations (achieved i.v.), AA has shown significant anticancer effects in vitro, in vivo, and in small-scale human reports at concentrations nontoxic to normal cells, thus having great potential as an adjuvant to the standard of care. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is another non-toxic, pro-oxidant metabolic therapy that delivers 100% oxygen at elevated barometric pressure, elevating tissue pO2 and oxygenating hypoxic tumor cells, which, coupled with high levels of ...