Dietary Therapy for Cancer -- Amino Acid Consumption Determines the Fate of Cancer Cells
martyb writes:
Dietary Therapy for Cancer? Amino Acid Consumption Determines the Fate of Cancer Cells:
A tumor is a group of cancer cells that multiplies-or proliferates-uncontrollably. Tumors originate from single cells that become cancerous when genes that cause cells to proliferate are over-activated. However, because these genes, called oncogenes, often also cause cell death, activation of a single oncogene within a cell is not enough for it to become a cancer cell. [...] For a cell to slip through the cracks and become cancer, several other oncogenes, along with cancer-suppressing genes, need to be activated in a multi-step process. The details of this process were the topic of the new study.
The international research group led by Sa Kan Yoo at RIKEN BDR focused on the oncogene Src and investigated how cell proliferation-oncogenesis-and cell death are regulated in the fruit fly. They showed that Src does not induce cell death as a result of cell proliferation, but instead drives both processes independently and simultaneously. [...] "Our major finding was that the oncogene Src promotes cell death and cell proliferation via parallel pathways."
[...] "We were excited to find that manipulating the amount of dietary methionine can affect cell proliferation but not cell death," says Yoo. "Currently we don't know whether our finding in flies will translate to cases of human cancer. But, we speculate that it will in particular cases because some human cancers also activate the Src gene.
[...] Since the process of oncogenesis is known to be the same in both fruit flies and mammals, the new findings can help explain how human cancers develop.
Journal Reference:
Hiroshi Nishida, Morihiro Okada, Lynna Yang, et al. Methionine restriction breaks obligatory coupling of cell proliferation and death by an oncogene Src in Drosophila, (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.59809)
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