Study Sheds Light on the Role of a Ketogenic Diet in Preventing Pancreatic Cancer
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A recent study published in the journal Nature reveals that a ketogenic diet may work in conjunction with specific cancer treatments to prevent the onset of pancreatic cancer.
Researchers have observed that a high-fat diet, when combined with cancer therapy, disrupted fat metabolism in mice, depriving tumours of the essential nutrients they required for continued growth. As long as the mice were maintained on the ketogenic diet, tumour growth ceased.
The findings arose from the researchers' initial objective of understanding how the body sustains itself during fasting, a process influenced by a protein called eukaryotic translation initiation factor (eIF4E). This protein triggers fat consumption during fasting, a mechanism also activated by a ketogenic diet.
The researchers found that eFT508, a new cancer drug in clinical trials, inhibits eIF4E and the ketogenic pathway, thereby stopping the body's fat metabolism. When eFT508 was used in conjunction with a ketogenic diet in an animal model of pancreatic cancer, it effectively starved the cancer cells, resulting in tumour shrinkage.
These findings reveal a novel signalling pathway induced by fatty acids that activates selective translation, driving ketogenesis and offering a targeted dietary intervention for cancer. This approach shows potential for treating other cancers through a combination of diet and medication. While experts are optimistic about the promise of this diet-drug combination, they emphasize that further research in humans is necessary to fully explore its efficacy.
Reference: Yang, H., Zingaro, V. A., Lincoff, J., Tom, H., Oikawa, S., Oses-Prieto, J. A., Edmondson, Q., Seiple, I., Shah, H., Kajimura, S., Burlingame, A. L., Grabe, M., & Ruggero, D. (2024). Remodelling of the translatome controls diet and its impact on tumorigenesis. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-00000-0
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