Recently, a team of Belgian researchers showed that cancer cells feed on fat in order to develop. And hypothesized that depriving these cells of this source of energy could slow the progression of cancer. It is also on this promising path that researchers from the Salk Institute (United States) have worked.
Their study, published in Nature, focuses on the role played by an enzyme called Acetyl-CoA Carboxylase (ACC), essential for synthesizing fatty acids in cells. These fatty acids are used to build the cell membrane that protects them. They therefore investigated whether blocking the production of this enzyme affects the development of cancer cells.
Preserving healthy cells by killing diseased cells
To do this, they used an inhibitor that “suppresses” the action of the ACC enzyme in lung cancer cells. Tests carried out both in vitro and on animal models.
Result: the tumor mass decreased by two thirds in the treated animals compared to the others. Better, in combination with another already known treatment, carboplatin, the tumor is reduced by 87%. A much better benefit than carboplatin alone which only destroys half of cancer cells.
The advantage of the technique is that it can spare healthy cells while “starving” diseased cells. The very positive results of this research should allow researchers to soon conduct clinical trials and develop a drug against several cancers, in particular lung and liver cancer.
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