Starving cancer

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First, the caveats. Cancer patients, don’t try this on your own. Cancer research is riddled with the rise and fall of promising rodent findings, and the following study has been done only in mice.

Still, a study published March 31 in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers hope for cancer treatment, seductive in its simplicity. Valter Longo, an anti-aging researcher at USC, was part of a team of researchers who found that mice injected with aggressive human tumors and starved for two days before receiving a high dose of chemotherapy thrived and lived longer than untreated mice. Their well-fed rodent counterparts fared much worse. Half of the normally fed mice died following chemotherapy and those who survived suffered lasting weight and energy loss.

It’s unknown whether fasting for two days before chemotherapy would improve results in people. But starved normal cells go into a kind of hibernation and are more able to resist outside stresses, like harmful chemotherapy agents. On the other hand, cancer cells never hibernate. Their on/off switch is stuck in the ‘on’ position. So in theory, after a fast cancer cells remain vulnerable to toxic chemotherapy drugs, while starved normal cells are better able to resist their damage. The full study requires a paid subscription to the journal, but you can see the abstract for free.

The study offers a flip side to a top cancer research goal of targeting only cancer cells with toxic chemo drugs. The fasting strategy, rather than offering a silver bullet that aims only at cancer cells, instead offers a kind of silver shield to protect normal cells.

The next step is to design clinical trials with humans to test the effectiveness and safety of fasting before chemotherapy. In a press release, USC onlologist David Quinn, says, “Don’t try and do this at home. We need to do the studies.”

--Susan Brink