Breast cancer cells thrive on dietary fat particles in the blood

Breast cancer is a very disabling disease for women. According to figures from the League Against Cancer, more than 54,000 women are affected each year and nearly one in nine women will face it in her lifetime. In the latest study conducted at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Dartmouth (USA), researchers demonstrated the potential to help scientists develop a better therapeutic approach to target what serves as fuel for breast cancer cells.

Researchers have found that fat particles from the bloodstream enter breast cancer cells through a mechanism that increases the risk of cancer in people with high-fat diets and obesity, even worsening patient outcomes and prognosis. The results of their study were published in the Journal of Lipid Research.

A New Mechanism Revealed

The team of researchers, led by William Kinlaw III, professor of medicine emeritus at the Dartmouth and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center, hopes to better understand how fat from the diet can influence breast cancer cells.

Thanks to this study, the researchers understood that the fat present in the bloodstream is used by cancer cells to fuel their proliferation. Lipid-rich particles circulating in the blood can be consumed in large quantities by breast cancer cells. These fat particles in the blood attach themselves to the surface of the breast cancer cell, through a mechanism that has never been described before.

William Kinlaw III explains his discovery: “We had previously shown that fatty particles in the blood could increase the growth of breast cancer cells, but this new work demonstrates that breast cancer cells can engulf large amounts of preformed breast fat. blood using an unexpected fat particle uptake mechanism called ‘lipoprotein endocytosis’.”

Blood fat as an energy store

According to him, breast cancer cells take advantage of the lipids present in the blood like a “free lunch”, which leads to metabolic reprogramming of the cells. This study therefore reveals the direct link between dietary fat and the cell biology of cancer.

Researchers believe new therapies could be developed by focusing on the fat made by cancer cells as a target area. While many academic and pharmaceutical efforts are underway to target cancer cells’ new fat synthesis, the study shows that breast cancer cells can evade drugs that inhibit lipid synthesis by simply taking in more exogenous particles of fat.

The team now plans to publish in detail the biological influence of high-fat diets on breast cancer. liveusing mouse models.