CancerDialysis the new metabolomic treatment!?
Author: Sture Hobro
Metabolomics has become a significant field in cancer research. It is a rapidly evolving field that aims to study the small-molecule metabolites in cells and tissues and may and often is related to the study of cancer. Metabolomics has been used to identify metabolic signatures that can distinguish between different cancers and help to tailor treatments or to evaluate the impact from a given treatment. Metabolomics have become a buzz word in cancer research world and have created a new objective lens to understand the complex nature of cancer biology and can be linked to understanding a specific cancer and further to measure the impact from a cancer treatment. As is, metabolomics is an observation tool not a treatment.
Surprisingly, CancerDialysis is a metabolomic treatment approach in itself and can rapidly shape the metabolomes in a tumor through dialysis. The treatment involves using dialysis to change the blood composition of metabolites by lowering glucose, glutamine and other amino acids in blood and elevating ketone levels, thereby disrupting major metabolic pathways important for cancer cell survival. Kidney dialysis treatments of millions of fragile patients normally with non-cancerous cells have shown a remarkable resilience to deal with those changes again and again, every second day for year out and years in.
Cancer cells manifest a dependence on glucose and glutamine as fuel compared to healthy cells and may have much more problems to deal with this shift. Dialysis has the power to shift the patient from a state dependent on glucose and glutamine to a ketogenic condition (KC) combined with low glutamine levels—thereby forcing ATP production through the Krebs cycle something that may be more problematic for many cancer cells.
The dialysis’ impact on cancer cells includes not only metabolic effects but also redox balance, immunological, and epigenetic effects. These pleiotropic effects may therefore potentially enhance the effectiveness of traditional cancer treatments, such as radiotherapies, chemotherapies, and immunotherapies—resulting in improved outcomes and longer survival rates for cancer patients.
The figure shows the difference in cancer cells during the different metabolomic conditions. A. during normal situations where cancer cells extracts the Tumor MicroEnvironment (TME) of almost all available nutrients and creates a nutrient poor TME. B. how TME will be shifted during the CancerDialysis treatment. Dialysis have the power to control the availability of metabolites in the blood, as glucose, glutamine, acetate, ketones, serine, cystine and glycine and in turn affect both the cancer cells and its TME. In other words, dialysis generates a new metabolome.
