How to Starve Cancer

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For a long time, the prevailing thought was that altered metabolism in cancer cells was the result of genes and mutations that determined metabolism,” says Jason Locasale, a cancer biologist at Duke University. “Now, as we know, it’s a complex interaction of environment and genes, and one of the major factors at play is nutrition.”

For people currently struggling with a cancer diagnosis, McLelland has an important message: Never give up.Suggesting that people fast or starve themselves to kill a tumor has been the domain of dubious and exaggerated claims over the years, and that is not the suggestion now. In recent trials, metabolic pathways have been targeted though various approaches to changing what people eat. Some research has involved minimizing sugar intake. Indeed, some cancer cells metabolize glucose at higher than normal levels (to support the process of aerobic glycolysis), and depleting their access to sugar can slow growth. While the sugar-and-insulin angle has shown promise, more of the research has focused on dietary protein—or, specifically, individual amino acids that make up that protein. Studies have shown that the restriction of the amino acids serine and glycine can modulate cancer outcomes. According to a 2018 study in Nature, the chemotherapy drug methotrexate is affected by the amino acid histidine. Another, asparagine, is involved in the progression of breast cancer metastasis. The Metro Map is the key to starving the cancer. Once you’ve done that, killing it becomes much easier,” said McLelland.

This strategy could be applied beyond rare sarcoma tumors because the metabolic defect is often present in other cancers, including certain types of breast, colon, lung, brain and bone tumors, the researchers said. The new study includes data showing similar anti-tumor responses in cell lines from these cancer types. Van Tine also pointed out that all of the drugs used in the study are either already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for other conditions or in ongoing clinical trials investigating cancer drugs. One man who followed her protocol took his PSA numbers from 1008 down to .67. She’s also helped a stage IV pancreatic cancer patient achieve full remission—another success story unheard of in the medical world. My mother’s cancer was a huge wake-up call to me to re-evaluate the situation I’d found myself in. For the first time ever, I realized I was only one step away from terminal cancer,” McLelland said. “That’s when I started looking at diet and supplementation in more detail as a way to combat cancer.”This book will answer all the burning questions you face when you begin to explore complementary cancer care. Which ‘off-label’ drugs and supplements should you take? Should you try the ketogenic diet? Should you fast? Is fat safe? How much and when should you exercise? Jane explains why each patient needs a personalised approach and, importantly, how to work this out. Last year, Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Columbia University researcher and author of The Emperor of All Maladies, and his colleagues found that at least one particular chemotherapy drug can be made more effective by combining its use with eating a low-sugar, protein-and-fat-heavy “ketogenic” diet. In a paper in Nature, the researchers suggest that the effect was related to decreasing the levels of insulin that the pancreas releases into the blood in response to eating. Now, 18 years later, after suffering from cervical cancer, secondary lung cancer, and treatment-related myelodysplasia, she is alive, well, and cancer-free. I do believe we already have every drug and every supplement that we need to beat cancer. The key is getting the right combinations to people at the right time,” said McLelland. “Yes, in certain circumstances there can be too much damage to the body from the cancer itself. But if you can get to people before that, I cannot see why patients can’t be rescued even from advanced malignancies. Stage IV cancer should not be a death sentence, in my view.” We have determined that this metabolic defect is present in 90 percent of sarcomas,” said senior author Brian A. Van Tine, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine. “Healthy cells don’t have this weakness. We have been trying to create a therapy that takes advantage of the metabolic defect because, in theory, it should target only the tumor. Basically, the defect allows us to force the tumor cells to starve.”