Nutrient deprivation causes significant changes in how cancer cells interact with their environment and with each other.  In this study, we compared the effects of restricting vital nutrients to cancer cells and normal cells.  The nutrients examined include glucose, the amino acid glutamine, and growth factors (derived from fetal bovine serum (FBS)).  Glucose is significant because it is generally the preferred cellular nutrient.  The amino acid Glutamine can also be metabolized to provide both energy in the form of ATP, and the precursors needed for proliferation.  The growth provided by FBS initiates the signaling pathways required for survival and continual cell growth and proliferation.  Restricting these nutrients might be expected to cause immediate cell death, which is often the case for untransformed noncancerous cells.  Cells that have been transformed, however, in some cases are able to escape death, which may reflect their ability to switch metabolic pathways or obtain nutrients from other sources. These observations are relevant to pre-angiogenic tumors, which maintain themselves under these nutrient deprived conditions.

Effects of starvation on cancer cell viability and proliferation

247th National Meeting (2014)

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