New Treatment Option for Aggressive Cancers

“A new study by researchers at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and McGill University has revealed that the popular dietary supplement alanine may offer an effective treatment option for people diagnosed with several types of aggressive cancer.

The findings, published in Nature Communications, show alanine’s potential as a treatment for cancers characterized by a dual loss of the SMARCA4 and SMARCA2 genes. These SMARCA4/2-deficient cancers include small cell carcinoma of the ovary, hypercalcemic type (SCCOHT) — a rare and lethal tumour that occurs predominantly in women in their mid-twenties — as well as other malignancies, including a subset of lung cancers.

Currently, there are few effective treatments for these forms of cancer, which are often highly resistant to conventional chemotherapies and have very poor outcomes.

‘Through an unbiased genome-wide screen, our teams identified the key metabolic change that enables the development of the aggressive SMARCA4/2-deficient cancers,’ said Dr. Yemin Wang, an adjunct professor in UBC’s department of laboratory medicine and staff scientist at the BC Cancer, and co-lead author of the study. ‘This finding not only helps us better understand the biology of these cancers, but also provided multiple potential treatment strategies, alone or in combination with chemotherapy or immunotherapy, for clinical validation.’”

Learn more here on “Popular dietary supplement may offer new treatment option for aggressive cancers” via UBC Faculty of Medicine.