Can Eating Sugar Feed Cancer Cells?

B'SD

22 Shvat

Medical experts at Johns Hopkins have raised an issue I've warned you about many times: there is a suspicious, possibly causal relationship between eating sugar and having cancer (skip the Splenda. That's no help, either).

Here are snippets from a recent JHU press release:

WHAT’S FEEDING CANCER CELLS?
--Johns Hopkins Researchers Discover

How Critical Cancer Gene Controls Nutrient Use

Cancer cells need a lot of nutrients to multiply and survive. While much is understood about how cancer cells use blood sugar to make energy, not much is known about how they get other nutrients. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered how the Myc cancer-promoting gene uses microRNAs to control the use of glutamine, a major energy source. The results, which shed light on a new angle of cancer that might help scientists figure out a way to stop the disease, appear Feb. 15 online at Nature...

“While we were looking for how Myc promotes cancer growth, it was unexpected to find that Myc can increase use of glutamine by cancer cells,” says Chi V. Dang, M.D., Ph.D., the Johns Hopkins Family Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins. “This surprising discovery only came about after scientists from several disciplines came together across Hopkins to collaborate ­ it was a real team effort.”

“... Next we want to study GLS in mice to see if removing it can slow or stop cancer growth,” says Gao. “If we know how cancer cells differ from normal cells in how they make energy and use nutrients, we can identify new pathways to target for designing drugs with fewer side effects.”

This study was funded by

the National Institutes of Health,

the National Cancer Institute,

the Rita Allen Foundation,

the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society

and the Sol Goldman Center for

Pancreatic Cancer Research

Authors on the paper are Ping Gao, Irina Tchernyshyov, Tsung-Cheng Chang, Yun-Sil Lee, Karen Zeller, Angelo De Marzo, Jennifer Van Eyk, Joshua Mendell and Chi V. Dang, of Johns Hopkins; and Kayoko Kita and Takfumi Ochi of Teikyo University in Japan.

Learn more of the perplexing but compelling story at:

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hematology/faculty_staff/dang.html,

http://www.proteomics.jhu.edu/index.php,

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/geneticmedicine/People/Faculty/mendell.html,

and at http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html

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Meanwhile, you can curb your sweet tooth's craving's with fruit, fresh juices, some pure maple syrup (not diluted with preservatives, additives and whatnot), and even a spoonful of honey IF your doctor doesn't object.

Click on I'm buying Yocheved's book TODAY so I can learn more about how to cope with medical problems! No wonder it's been in the #2 spot at The Musella Research Foundation's suggested reading list since November 2nd 2008!

To your good health,

Yojeved Golani
Coping with a Medical Crisis?
Make the Changes You Need in Your Life