Reverse thinking: Tumor nutritional therapy

Abstract

Tumor cells often exhibit metabolic abnormalities to meet the needs of rapid proliferation, and targeting tumor metabolism has become one of the effective strategies for cancer treatment. However, most of the current methods targeting metabolism focus on inhibiting hyperactivated metabolic pathways, hindering their further application. A recent innovative work, proposed a nutrient-based strategy to reactivate metabolism for tumor therapy by targeting suppressed metabolic pathways. This approach through delivering nutrients to tumor cells directly using nanotechnology indicates that specific nutrients can serve as potent activators of metabolic pathways. As a new direction along the reverse thinking, this study suggests that this nutrient-based metabolism reactivation strategy will inspire broad applications in the treatment of other diseases associated with metabolic disorders, besides tumor.