In a recent study, researchers found that mannose sugar, a nutritional supplement, could slow tumor growth and enhance the effects of chemotherapy with multiple types of cancer.
This study was from the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute.
It is a step towards understanding how mannose could be used to help treat cancer.
Tumors use more glucose than normal, healthy tissues. However, it is very hard to control the amount of glucose in your body through diet alone.
The researchers found that mannose can interfere with glucose to reduce how much sugar cancer cells can use.
Tumors need a lot of glucose to grow, so limiting the amount they can use should slow cancer progression.
The problem is that normal tissues need glucose as well, so scientists can’t completely remove it from the body.
In the current study, the team found a dosage of mannose that could block enough glucose to slow tumor growth, but not so much that normal tissues were affected.
The researchers first examined how mice with pancreatic, lung or skin cancer responded when mannose was added to their drinking water and given as an oral treatment.
They found that adding the supplement significantly slowed the growth of tumors and did not cause any obvious side effects.
To test how mannose could also affect cancer treatment, mice were treated with cisplatin and doxorubicin—two of the most widely used chemotherapy drugs.
They found that mannose enhanced the effects of chemotherapy, slowing tumor growth, reducing the size of tumors and even increasing the lifespan of some mice.
Several other cancer types, including leukemia, osteosarcoma, ovarian and bowel cancer, were also investigated.
The researchers grew cancer cells in the lab and then treated them with mannose to see whether their growth was affected.
Some cells responded well to the treatment, while others did not. It was also found that the presence of an enzyme that breaks down mannose in cells was a good indicator of how effective treatment was.
The researchers’ next step is investigating why treatment only works in some cells so that they can work out which patients might benefit the most from this approach.
They hope to start clinical trials with mannose in people as soon as possible to determine its true potential as a new cancer therapy.
This is early research, but it is hoped that finding this perfect balance means that, in the future, mannose could be given to cancer patients to enhance chemotherapy without damaging their overall health.
It’s important that more research is conducted before mannose can be used in cancer patients.
Patients should not self-prescribe mannose as there is a real risk of negative side effects that haven’t been tested for yet.
Professor Kevin Ryan is the lead author of the research.
The study was funded by Cancer Research UK and Worldwide Cancer Research and is published in Nature.
Copyright © 2019 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
