"Starve to death" cancer cells have a new way! Starting from amino acid metabolism

Earlier, discovery Jun reported that a cheap cold medicine was proved to be able to "starve" cancer cells Now, the journal Nature Medicine offers another "magic trick" to kill cancer cells by blocking nutrition: scientists have discovered a new compound that can cut off the metabolic pathway of amino acids in tumors, thus inhibiting tumor growth "Unlike normal healthy cells, tumor cells need special metabolic needs." "These additional needs give scientists the opportunity to discover potential cancer treatments in the form of chemistry, Radiology, and molecular imaging," said Charles Manning, research team leader and author of the article's newsletter He led the team to find a new small molecule compound that can prevent cancer cells from absorbing the necessary nutrients, glutamine, and thus inhibit tumor growth Photo source: Journal (DOI: 10.1038 / nm 4464) new recruit can "starve" cancer cells Glutamine is an essential amino acid for many cells to maintain normal function, including biosynthesis, cell signaling and anti oxidative damage Cancer cells divide much faster than normal cells, so they need more glutamine It has been shown that acst2 protein is the main transporter of glutamine into cancer cells In lung cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer and other cancers, the up-regulation of acst2 protein level is related to the survival rate of patients When acst2 gene expression was inhibited, the growth of cancer cells was significantly inhibited The Charles Manning team believes that targeting glutamine metabolism is a "potential strategy for targeted cancer prevention." Based on this conjecture, they developed the first small molecular inhibitor, v-9302, which can effectively target acst2 protein, and confirmed that v-9302 can block the expression of acst2 protein, resulting in the decrease of expansion of cancer cells, the increase of oxidative damage, and eventually death However, they stressed: "when using this new inhibitor to treat glutamine dependent tumors, the corresponding biomarkers need to be verified." This is because the response of v-9302 depends largely on the activity of acst2 transporter rather than the expression of acst2 protein This is a model of v-9302 targeting glutamine transporter (image source: Vanderbilt University) "visualized" and precise anti-cancer What's more, they used noninvasive positron emission computed tomography（ PET) is combined with this small molecular inhibitor - by attaching an imaging isotope to the drug v-9302, the real-time monitoring of "whether v-9302 can target the tumor of glutamine rapid metabolism" is realized At present, the research team of Vanderbilt University Medical Center is conducting five clinical trials to test the potential of a new PET tracer named 18f-fspg for the diagnosis of lung cancer, liver cancer and ovarian cancer "If we can use a specific drug to achieve tumor visualization monitoring, it will promote the precise treatment of cancer," said Charles manning