Cancer metabolism was addressed briefly Oct. 8 at the National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation patient symposium in St. Louis, Mo.  This was one of several cancer treatment topics that I am reporting about during the coming weeks.

Dr. Brian Van Tine, sarcoma program director at the Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis, spoke on “Understanding Your Cancer’s Metabolism.”

Some cancer therapies currently in use involve attempts to change metabolism through diet to alter the course of cancer.

Van Tine, however, said, “There is little you can do with your diet to alter the course of your tumor outcome. Metabolism is tricky. It’s like a wonderfully orchestrated watch.”

If you try to put a halt in the system, the body will try to go another way to accomplish the same task, he said.

When cancer cells are born, they have a different metabolism from the rest of the body. The purpose of cancer is to grow. In the metabolic process, nine out of ten cancer patients don’t have a urea cycle (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27982/ )  and don’t express ASS1 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/445) in their tumors.

These two conditions make Leiomyosarcoma patients prime candidates for a metabolic-based therapy. Dr. Van Tine is studying possible future treatments for cancer / sarcoma patients using metabolic therapy. Click here for an explanation of his research.