Therapeutic targeting of amino acid dependency in cancer cells

Abstract

Cancer cells often undergo changes to their metabolism when they mutate, to meet energetic and biosynthetic demands of their high proliferation rates and environment. Recent and ongoing research suggests that some of these nutrients and substances themselves can encourage oncogenic progression by altering cell signaling and blocking cellular differentiation. Such alterations in metabolism were once viewed as an indirect response to cell proliferation and survival signals, but studies show that the changes are as a direct result of modifications made for the cell to become cancerous.T o satisfy mutant changes, cancer cells often require changes made in their metabolic pathways, requiring certain nutrients to progress and causing these cells to become dependent on these nutrients. Newly developed cancer therapy, still in the experimental stages, suggests eliminating or reducing these nutrients as an effective way to disrupt cancer cell activity and eventually, kill the cells. This paper focuses on the developed methods of targeting nutrients necessary to these new metabolic pathways, as a form of cancer treatment.