The simplicity of the treatment will help it reach patients quickly should it prove to be safe and effective.
"We should have pretty solid results just a few weeks after we start the study," Longo said, explaining that standard blood tests can show whether or not patients were protected by fasting.
"Within a year, you could have this into many different hospitals, if it works, and that's a big if," he said.
The initial trial will not risk increasing chemotherapy doses but simply test for the protective value of a brief period of starvation. It will take more testing to see if starvation can be used to safely increase the doses and frequency of chemo treatments.
"Eventually this is going to work," he said.
"We just have to find the equivalent ... is it 48 hours, or is it 48 hours plus maybe targeting certain receptors in certain genes? We know the system pretty well ... we just have to find the equivalent. I'm confident that within a year or two we'll have that."
RSS