Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer, and sadly, most patients survive only one or two years after diagnosis.
These tumors grow quickly, invade surrounding brain tissue, and often resist standard treatments like surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.
A new study from the University of Michigan suggests that diet could open the door to new treatment options by targeting the way brain tumors use nutrients.
The research, published in Nature, looked closely at how glioblastoma cells process sugar compared to healthy brain cells.
Both types of cells need sugar, but the way they use it is very different. The brain normally turns sugar into energy and important chemicals that help with thinking and overall brain health. Cancer cells, however, take sugar down another path.
Instead of fueling brain function, they use it to create building blocks like DNA and RNA, which help tumors grow and spread.
“It’s like a fork in the road,” explained Andrew Scott, a researcher on the team. “Normal brain cells use sugar to support health, while tumors redirect it to make more cancer cells.”
To study this, scientists injected small amounts of labeled sugar into both mice and patients with brain tumors, allowing them to track exactly how it was being used.
This work showed that while the healthy brain focused on energy and neurotransmitters, cancer cells shut down those processes and used the sugar for growth instead.
The team also found another important difference: how brain cancers handle amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
Normally, the brain makes amino acids from sugar. But glioblastomas avoid this step and instead pull amino acids directly from the blood. This discovery raised an important question: what would happen if the blood supply of certain amino acids was reduced?
To find out, researchers tested diets in mice that restricted two amino acids, serine and glycine. The results were striking. Mice on the restricted diet had smaller tumors and responded better to radiation and chemotherapy compared to mice that ate normal diets.
“By cutting off these amino acids, we improved how well standard treatments worked,” said Dr. Deepak Nagrath, a co-senior author of the study.
The researchers also used mathematical models to map out how sugar and amino acids travel through different cellular pathways. This could help identify other drug targets in the future.
The team is now working on plans for clinical trials to test whether specialized diets can help glioblastoma patients in the same way they helped mice. While more research is needed, the findings are promising and highlight how nutrition and metabolism could play a role in fighting one of the most deadly cancers.
“This is a true team effort,” said Dr. Daniel Wahl, one of the study leaders. “We hope these discoveries can lead to better treatment options for patients soon.”
If you care about cancer risk, please read studies that exercise may stop cancer in its tracks, and vitamin D can cut cancer death risk.
For more health information, please see recent studies that yogurt and high-fiber diet may cut lung cancer risk, and results showing that new cancer treatment may reawaken the immune system.
