A Belgian team of researchers may have found the path towards treating one of the most frequent and hardest to treat forms of cancer.
Scientists from the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) have put their thinking caps on and discovered that cancer cells take advantage of nutrients in the liver to circumvent the immune system. They use these nutrients to grow but are also able to manipulate their environment in such a way that immune cells used to fight cancer cannot attack them properly.
The researchers’ findings were published in the prestigious Nature Metabolism magazine. They specifically mention palmitate, a saturated fatty acid, as being responsible for promoting liver metastases.
A promising experiment on mice gave them proof of concept for a potential new treatment for humans, though a lot more research is needed to discover the best medication to fight this manipulation. That said, the research offers a glimmer of hope that one day this vicious and relentless form of cancer will be tamed, saving millions of lives around the globe.
May these Belgian scientists continue their groundbreaking research in finding the cure for cancer.
