REAL CLEAR SCIENCE
Cancer is the target of some of the most advanced treatments in medicine’s arsenal. Proton therapy bombards tumors with targeted streams of positively charged particles. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (engineered white blood cells) penetrate into tumors and destroy cancer cells. CAR T-cell therapy sends reprogrammed T-cells to hunt down out-of-control cells.
Oddly, however, clinicians often neglect a simpler way to potentially fight cancer, one that can be used in tandem with other therapies: food.
Dietary interventions for cancer were the focus of a recent review article published in the journal Trends in Molecular Medicine. The authors, Carlos Martínez-Garay and Nabil Djouder, scientists at Spain’s National Cancer Research Center, described how “precision nutrition” could maximize the effectiveness of cancer therapies with limited complications.
As Martínez-Garay and Djouder wrote, researchers have noticed for some time that cancer cells demand large amounts of glucose (sugar) and certain amino acids to fuel their rampant growth, raising the potential that diets that limit these compounds could slow cancer’s spread.
