Attention Glioblastoma cancer patients.

Combo of ketogenic diet and the antibiotic DON kills glioblastoma in mice. Should be applicable to humans, too.

Research applied a non-toxic therapeutic strategy of a ketogenic diet and an antibiotic called DON (6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine) to mice with late-stage glioblastoma. It killed tumour cells, reversed disease symptoms, and improved overall survival. The combo also reduced edema, hemorrhage, and inflammation.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-05-cancer-fighting-combination-glioblastoma.html

Entire journal article: Purna Mukherjee et al, Therapeutic benefit of combining calorie-restricted ketogenic diet and glutamine targeting in late-stage experimental glioblastoma, Communications Biology (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-019-0455-x

'''Cancer-fighting combination targets glioblastoma

by Boston College'''

May 30, 2019

Researchers have paired a specialized diet and a tumor-fighting drug and found the non-toxic combination helps to destroy the two major cells found in an aggressive form of brain cancer, the team reports in the online edition of the Nature group journal Communications Biology.

The international team combined a calorie-restricted diet high in fat and low in carbohydrates with a tumor-inhibiting antibiotic and found the combination destroys cancer stem cells and mesenchymal cells, the two major cells found in glioblastoma, a fast-moving brain cancer that resists traditional treatment protocols.

The ketogenic diet and the antibiotic 6-diazo-5-oxo-L-norleucine—first characterized in 1956 and referred to as DON—offer a non-toxic therapeutic strategy that could be used to manage the deadly brain cancer, said Boston College Professor of Biology Thomas N. Seyfried, a lead author of the paper with Boston College Senior Research Scientist Purna Mukherjee.

The researchers, probing a treatment modeled on evidence that glioblastoma is primarily a mitochondrial metabolic disease driven by fermentation, discovered the combination was able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier that shields the brain from both injury and interventions, they wrote in the article, titled "Therapeutic benefit of combining calorie-restricted ketogenic diet and glutamine targeting in late-stage experimental glioblastoma."

"We were surprised that the restricted ketogenic diet facilitated delivery of DON through the blood-brain barrier," said Seyfried, a lipid biochemist and author of the book Cancer As A Metabolic Disease (Wiley, 2012). "It appears from this study and our previous study with another drug, that the restricted ketogenic diet can be considered a novel drug delivery system for the brain. There is no drug known that can do this."

[Moar at two websites above]