Reactive Oxygen Species (continued)

May 17, 2016

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Reactive Oxygen Species (continued)We've now gotten to measure ROS in three cancer lines and a fibroblast control. Our hypothesis was that cancers overproduced ROS, but kept them within survivable bounds by also overexpressing UCP2. 
So far we've been right! A colon cancer line (SW 480) and an aggressive breast cancer line (MDA MB 231) both expressed 3-4 times as much ROS as did our fibroblast control cells. 
Our other breast cancer cell line, MCF7, is much less aggressive and expresses barely more UCP2 than fibroblasts. (See our graph of Other Experimental Data in our original project description). Therefore MCF7 would be predicted to have ROS levels not very different from fibroblasts, which is what we found.

Kenneth, Rose, and 17 others like this.

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Eugene J FineResearcher

There's often more than a single next step to choose from. One path might be to confirm the relationship of higher ROS with UCP2 and with aggressiveness vs. all the cancer lines we studied. Another might be to follow Dando's example and 'knock-down' UCP2 to see if all the cancer cells show increased ROS, increased cell death, and decreased growth.

May 17, 20161

Chris

Prof. Fine, what do you think should be the next step in light of these findings?

May 17, 20160

About This Project

Can low carbohydrate ketogenic diets inhibit cancers?

Nutrition & Metabolism Society/Albert Einstein College of Medicine /SUNY Downstate Medical Center

Insulin is a hormone which supports growth of normal cells, but also of cancers. A very low carbohydrate (VLC) diet safely and readily lowers blood insulin levels. The effects of a VLC diet has potential to inhibit cancer growth without harming normal tissues.

We further hypothesize that a VLC diet can combine with the effects of drug treatment in cancers, thus reducing drug doses and therefore toxicities. We aim to test this hypothesis in cell cultures.