Lung cancer cells grown in the laboratory. Image credit: Anne Weston, Francis Crick Institute (CC BY-NC 4.0)
In the body, cancer cells can rely on different nutrients than normal cells, and they can use these nutrients in a different way. What cancer cells consume also depends on what is available in their immediate environment. In a tumor, cells grab nutrients from the ‘interstitial’ fluid that surrounds them, but what is present in this liquid may vary within tumors arising in different locations. Understanding what nutrients are ‘on the menu’ in specific tumors would help to target diseased cells while sparing healthy ones, but this knowledge has been difficult to obtain.
To investigate this, Sullivan et al. used a technique called mass spectrometry to measure the amounts of 120 nutrients present in the interstitial fluid of mouse pancreas and lung tumors. Different levels of nutrients were found in the two types of tumors, and analyses showed that what was present in the interstitial fluid depended on the type of cancer cells, where the tumor was located, and what the animals ate. This suggests that cancer cells may have different needs because they are limited in what they have access to.
It remains to be seen whether the nutrients levels found in mouse tumors are the same as those in humans. Armed with this knowledge, it may then be possible to feed cancer cells grown in the laboratory with the nutrient menu that they would have access to in the body. This could help identify new cancer treatments.
