2-deoxyglucose
Also called: 2-DG.
Last reviewed 2026-09-16. How this works.
When to call your team
Contact your care team the same day if you notice:
- feeling shaky, sweaty, dizzy or confused, as though your blood sugar has dropped
- feeling your heart beating oddly or unusually fast
- fainting or feeling close to fainting
- blood in your stools, or stools that look black
In the trials of this compound, people felt as though their blood sugar had dropped while the measured level was actually high, so how it feels is not a reliable guide to what is happening. Heart rhythm changes and bleeding from the gut were also recorded. These are reasons to make a phone call. They are not a diagnosis, and this page cannot tell you what is causing them.21
These are reasons to make contact, not a diagnosis. Whatever you are taking or thinking of taking, the people treating you can only weigh it if they know about it.
This block is about what to watch for, and it is not all this page holds: what has been recorded about harm is below. Nothing in this block is an all-clear for a question it does not mention.
Treating cancer Grade D
No human evidence of benefit, or none that survived testing.
Harm has been recorded in people for this claim. The grade measures how strong the evidence for benefit is; it says nothing about the harm, and the two are read from different parts of this page.
This one got as far as being given to people, and nothing useful happened when it did.
It reached people at a tolerable amount and produced no efficacy signal.
The harm
Reversible raised blood sugar in everyone at the higher amounts, bleeding from the gut in 6 percent, and reversible heart rhythm changes in 22 percent.2
The claim
The claim is that 2-deoxyglucose starves tumours by blocking the sugar pathway they depend on. It is the sugar-starvation idea in drug form, and unlike the diet version it was actually tested.
What it does
It is a glucose molecule altered so that cells take it up and then cannot use it, jamming the pathway. The mechanism is sound. That is not what this entry turns on.
The evidence
Two phase 1 trials. In the first, people with prostate cancer and other advanced cancers received it by mouth in escalating amounts, and the ceiling was set by heart rhythm changes. In the seven people with prostate cancer who completed therapy, there were no declines in the blood marker being followed.1
In the second, 34 people received it alone or with docetaxel. The best response was stable disease in 11 people, a partial response in one, and progressive disease in 22. No interaction with docetaxel was found.2
A phase 1 trial is not designed to prove efficacy, and the grade does not pretend otherwise. What this entry records is a different thing from most of the register: not absent evidence, and not a failed efficacy trial, but a compound that reached people at a tolerable amount and produced nothing worth taking further.21
One finding deserves its own line. At higher amounts, every single person developed raised blood sugar. The drug designed to starve tumours of sugar raised the sugar circulating in the blood, and people reported feeling as though theirs had dropped while the measured level was high.2
The studies this rests on
-
2-deoxyglucose in castrate-resistant prostate cancer and advanced malignancies1
A trial with no comparison group, open label, phase 1, measured a laboratory marker, not an outcome.
no declines in the blood marker followed, in seven prostate cancer patients completing therapy.
-
Phase I dose-escalation of 2-deoxyglucose alone or with docetaxel (NCT00096707)2
A trial with no comparison group, open label, phase 1, measured a clinical outcome, 34 participants.
stable disease in 11, partial response in 1, progressive disease in 22; no pharmacokinetic interaction with docetaxel.
What is absent
No controlled trial of 2-deoxyglucose has been conducted. Both human studies were dose-finding, which is a different question from whether it works.
Scope: any tumour type, any endpoint.
Established by trial scope, checked 2026-09-16. Result: both human studies in this record are phase 1 dose-escalation trials without a comparison group.12
What to ask
When a drug gets through a phase 1 trial and goes no further, what does that usually mean?
The dish-to-person gap
The register holds no human pharmacokinetic measurement for 2-deoxyglucose against a laboratory concentration. The trials here established a tolerable amount rather than a concentration.
Interactions
One of the two trials on this page looked specifically for an interaction with docetaxel and found none. That is a narrow finding about one drug, and it is more than most entries in this register can say.2
The whole interaction list, and how to turn it into a pharmacy review request.
Find a trial instead
The chapter records that toxicity limited further development, so there may be little to find.
Search ClinicalTrials.gov for recruiting studies of 2-deoxyglucose OR 2-DG
A trial is the same decision with monitoring, a known preparation and a doctor who knows what else you are taking.
References
Stein M, Lin H, Jeyamohan C, Dvorzhinski D, Gounder M, Bray K, Eddy S, Goodin S, White E, DiPaola RS. Targeting tumor metabolism with 2-deoxyglucose in patients with castrate-resistant prostate cancer and advanced malignancies. The Prostate 2010;70(13):1388-1394.
How this was reached: transcribed from chapter note, via docs/CHAPTER-NOTES.json, chapter 14 note 14.
A phase I dose-escalation trial of 2-deoxy-d-glucose alone or combined with docetaxel in patients with advanced solid tumors. Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology 2013.
doi:10.1007/s00280-012-2045-1 · NCT00096707
How this was reached: transcribed from chapter note, via docs/CHAPTER-NOTES.json, chapter 14 note 15.