WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Researchers from Washington University explored the indirect impact of fructose consumption on the tumor cells, paving way for a potential new cancer treatment.
Lately, fructose consumption has increased widely as high-fructose corn syrup is often used as a sweetener in beverages and processed foods.
'When we think about tumors, we tend to focus on what dietary components they consume directly. You put something in your body, and then you imagine that the tumor takes it up,' Gary Patti, a professor of chemistry and a professor of genetics and of medicine at the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, explained.
'But humans are complex. What you put in your body can be consumed by healthy tissue and then converted into something else that tumors use.'
For the study published in Nature, the scientists used various experimental systems, including zebrafish and murine models. They observed that the liver converts fructose into usable nutrients for cancer cells, who are unable to do so due to lack of essential enzymes.
The liver processes fructose into lipids, which are later converted into phosphatidylcholines by cancer cells. Phosphatidylcholines plays a crucial role in building cellular membranes during cancer cell proliferation.
'Our initial expectation was that tumor cells metabolize fructose just like glucose, directly utilizing its atoms to build new cellular components such as DNA. We were surprised that fructose was barely metabolized in the tumor types we tested,' said the study's first author, Ronald Fowle-Grider.
'We quickly learned that the tumor cells alone don't tell the whole story. Equally important is the liver, which transforms fructose into nutrients that the tumors can use.'
The findings suggested that fructose metabolism or its lipid intermediates should be studied further to develop strategies to tackle tumor development. It also emphasized the need to study the role of inter-organ nutrient transfer in cancer progression.
'An implication of these findings is that we do not have to limit ourselves to therapeutics that only target disease cells,' Patti concluded.
'Rather, we can think about targeting the metabolism of healthy cells to treat cancer. This has worked with mice in our study, but we would like to take advantage of our observations and try to improve the lives of patients.'
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