Carbonyl groups past and present

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  May, 2007  by Dan Kenner

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Some readers have noted that there is a significant link to the research on Avemar, reported in the recent article that I wrote about this functional food developed in Hungary (August/September, 2006) and the work of Dr. William F. Koch. His story is a significant part of the history of the therapeutic application of quinones.

Quinones have been discussed in the popular media in recent years. Researchers have speculated that the quinones in red wine are a factor possibly partly responsible for the "healthy French heart." The rate of cardiovascular disease has been inexplicably low in France even though there is a similar level of fat consumption in the average French person's diet. The well-known antioxidant coenzyme Q-10 (ubiquinone) is also in the quinone family and was originally developed in Japan as a medication for the treatment of heart disease. Anthraquinones and naphthoquinones are found to play important roles in a wide range of botanical medicines. Anthraquinones and naphthoquinones have been observed to have both anti-tumor and anti-microbial properties.

Quinones are carbonyl group molecules with a wide range of biological activity. One of their properties is to be able to attract and accumulate electrons in the carbon-hydrogen double bond. Benzo- and hydroquinones have anti-microbial activity. Adriamycin, daunorubicin, and mitomycin have cytostatic effects, and all of these compounds may modulate the immune system. The mechanism they share in common is suggested to be a free radical-scavenging capability.

Carbonyl group molecules like quinones play an important role in tissue chemistry. There are innumerable chemical reactions that involve or produce a carbonyl group as an intermediary or as an end product. They are electron donors, and therefore hydrogen acceptors, and break up congestion from oxidative stress through hydrogen abstraction. They initiate oxidative energy production for normal function and nutrition at the cellular level. Carbonyl group molecules were first researched in the early twentieth century by Dr. William F. Koch, the nephew of Robert Koch, the famous nineteenth century microbiologist who discovered the tubercle bacillus, postulated Koch's Law, and founded the Koch Institute.

William Koch found that carbonyl group molecules break up deposition and condensation processes, represented by tumors, degeneration, accumulation of all kinds of tissue debris, and plaque, and dissolve it because of their extremely powerful properties as electron donors (oxygen) and hydrogen acceptors. They reverse oxidative stress and initiate normal aerobic metabolism by donating negative charge. They also initiate a process of depolymerization that behaves as a type of "chain reaction," in such a way that the therapeutic effects of the administration of a single dose can have far-reaching effects and persist for an extended period of time.

In the 1920s, a new approach to cancer treatment pioneered by Dr. Koch, who was a professor of physiology at what is now Wayne State University, took a radically different view of the disease. Koch, like the Nobel Prize winners Otto Warburg (1) and Albert Szent-Gyorgyi decades after him, believed that cancer was the result of faulty metabolism and that it might be possible to return the malignant cells to a normal state. (2) He researched and developed the carbonyl group molecules parabenzoquinone (PBQ), and Glyoxal, which were used successfully for solid tumors, leukemias, lymphomas, and chronic viral infections.

Koch did not claim that his reagents destroy cancer cells. They appear to restore the terrain by means of this antioxidant "chain reaction," so that normal cell metabolism can resume. Koch treated hundreds of patients with phenomenal success, with long-term stability in cancer patients who were thought to be terminal, as well as with patients with a variety of neurological and metabolic disorders. (3)

Quinones similar to the ones developed by Koch are also found in pau d'arco, yew trees, and in apricot seeds and other natural sources that have been observed to have therapeutic or adjuvant properties in cancer treatment. In 1946, Dr. Willard Dow, President of the Dow Chemical Industries, said of Koch: "Koch is so far ahead of the thinking of his profession that he is not understood, and they even ridicule him at times." But, beyond ridicule, Koch suffered legal harassment and persecution in the US and eventually relocated to Brazil where he conducted his research with government sponsorship (see www.williamfkoch.com for detailed history and publications by Koch and his colleagues). Carbonyl group remedies are still used by natural medicine doctors in South America and Europe for chronic viral infections, cancer, asthma, and many types of metabolic disorders.

The most recent chapter of the Koch carbonyl group story takes us to India where researchers have been working for over ten years using a methylglyoxal-based formulation on advanced-stage cancer patients that has had "a dramatic positive effect on the patients." According to Manju Ray, a biochemist at the Indian Association of the Cultivation of Science (IACS), where the drug was developed under a project funded by the Department of Science and Technology and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, "We have what we think is a magic bullet against cancer." The scientists have observed that methylglyoxal was successful against different types of cancer, including acute myeloid leukemia, colon cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and cancers of ovary, breast, liver, lung, bone, gall bladder, pancreas, and oral cavity. Administered orally, no toxic reactions were observed. We can only hope that these powerful antioxidants, which have such enormous potential for malignancy and chronic viral infections, will finally become more widely available.