Sugar could be the key to a cure for cancer. Researchers have demonstrated that cancer cells use glucose to speed up the process of tumor growth. In addition, the cancer cells use the glucose as a protector against cell death; cell death is necessary in the usual life cycle of a non-cancerous cell.
One might think, “Why not just starve the person, and in turn the cells, of sugar?” Well, in short, it isn’t that simple.
The reality is that the cancer cells find other ways to fuel their need for glucose. However, don’t be disheartened by this, we are working closer to other ways of starving the cancer cells of sugar.
The discovery of what is giving the cancer cells the sugar is a major step in determining how exactly sugar can be used against the horrible disease. In a recent study published by Nature Communications we have found that the protein PARP14 is overproduced by the cancer cells, which enables them to use glucose to hasten their growth and ignore the natural death that cells have to face. The best news of this is that we have determined that inhibiting or reducing the cancer cells’ levels of PARP14 starves the cancer cells to death! In fact, when comparing biopsies of patients who had survived cancer and those who had not, levels of PARP14 were found to be much higher in patients that died from cancer.
Of course, the reality that lower PARP14 levels means higher chance of survival means that a treatment that blocks the production or lowers the level of PARP14 could quite possibly be a cure for the disease. With the possibility of a cure being in our midst, it may be soon that we no longer have to see families and individuals suffer at the hands of this monstrous disease. As a person who has had many family members have the disease, I truly hope that we find a cure so that we no longer have to lose people to something we have very little power against. Sometimes humanity can really rally against something terrible, and the actions of this man for a daughter of a woman with cancer help prove that there is good in the world.
If you have the resources, please donate to any of the following cancer charities, or even any cancer charity you know, to help research, and those battling the disease: LiveStrong, American Cancer Society, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Jhpiego, and Hope And Heroes.
Featured image by Wikimedia Commons available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
