That sounds utopian: In a scientific experiment, highly aggressive cancer cells actually destroyed themselves simply because certain amino acids were missing in the food. They were called glioblastomas, a type of tumor that still has a 100 percent mortality rate and an average life expectancy of just 16 months. Is there hope for the hopeless?
Ferroptosis can help with cancer destruction
Cell death is something completely natural. Our immune system usually recognizes abnormal or superfluous body cells by itself, breaks them down and absorbs them. In cancer cells, this process is often blocked, with the well-known fatal consequences. A specific version of cell death called ferroptosis was recently discovered. As the name suggests, iron plays an important role in this, as do two specific sulfur-containing amino acids.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine (UNC) and Columbia University severely restricted the intake of methionine and cysteine in the mice’s diet. These proteins have long been suspected of getting in the way of ferroptosis when it comes to the death of certain cancer cells. In particular, previous studies dealt with sarcomas as well as lung and pancreatic tumors. This time, however, it was all regarding the extremely tough glioblastoma doing its destructive work in the minds of the experimental mice.
Chemotherapy might thus be dosed much lower
The amino acid diet is said not only to have a direct impact on ferroptosis, but also to make the cancer more susceptible to chemotherapy. This will hopefully make it possible to dose significantly lower doses of the drugs associated with severe side effects. In fact, the diet mice survived significantly longer than their control group. The animals that received a mix of chemotherapy and diet fared particularly well.
Cysteine is an important component of whole grain products, but also of beef, poultry and eggs. Methionine is mainly found in fish, beef, pork, eggs, poultry and Brazil nuts. However, the transferability of the study results to humans is not yet clear, further research is needed at this point. In addition, cancer patients have a special energy requirement that would have to be covered despite diet. The human study that is now being pursued also takes this into account.
Those: newatlas.com
