My mother is a lung cancer patient with different metastases in brain and bone. We tried several times chemotherapy + radiotherapy without success. I heard that tetracycline derivatives may shrink tumors and may be able to stop metastases. How can we obtain these tetracycline based medicines ??? Kindly help...

Tetracycline derivatives are indeed in clinical trials in cancer patients. Four clinical trials are currently being sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to test one of the derivatives called COL-3 (also known as Metastat). I don't know if your mother is eligible for any of them. They have shown promising results for some tumors, but not necessarily for lung cancer. You could check with the NCI. I do believe it's too premature to recommend tetracycline-based derivatives for your mother's cancer. You might also check with the NCI (either by phone or by their web site) about other experimental studies. I should add that the mother compound, tetracyclin itself in the unmodified form, does not seem to work so I would definitely not recommend taking that. Hope this helps. BD.