Starving melanoma cells

Researchers from the Centenary Institute and the University of Sydney have suggested that it could be possible to treat melanoma - the deadliest form of skin cancer and third most common in Australia - by cutting off its food source.

The scientists last year published a paper in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showing that prostate cancer cells require the amino acid leucine for their growth, which they obtain through a nutrient pumping mechanism. Melanoma cells rely on the amino acid glutamine, but use the same mechanism.

In the team’s latest research, published in the International Journal of Cancer, they state that melanoma cells have more glutamine pumps on their surface - and that blocking these pumps stops their growth, starving them of their essential nutrients.

Dr Jeff Holst, who heads the Centenary Institute’s Origins of Cancer Research Group, led the work together with postdoctoral fellow Dr Qian (Kevin) Wang. He noted that once melanoma spreads, it rapidly develops resistance to known therapies: “But a drug that specifically targets and inhibits the glutamine pump will give us a new and different approach from current treatments.”

“This work is leading a new wave with potential to develop cancer therapeutic agents,” said Centenary Executive Director Mathew Vadas. “These drug targets, rather than mutations specific to the cancer, are exaggerated normal processes.”

Dr Holst noted that the pumping mechanism appears to occur “in a broad range of cancers, particularly solid cancers … This opens the possibility of designing therapies that can be used to block nutrient pumps across multiple cancers.”

He is hopeful that such a compound can be developed and tested in five to 10 years.