Arginine is an amino acid that is made by our bodies and is found in large amounts in fish, meat, and nuts. But new research published in the journal Science Advances shows that arginine is also important for cancer cells. And depriving them of it could make tumors more likely to be attacked by the body’s immune system.
Researchers from Sohail Tavazoie’s Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology found that this amino acid becomes scarce in a number of human cancers. This causes the cancer cells to find a clever genetic workaround: when arginine levels drop, they change proteins so that they can take up arginine and other amino acids more efficiently. And it’s interesting that, in order to keep growing, they cause mutations that make them less dependent on it.
“It’s like if you had a LEGO set and you were trying to build a fancy model plane, but you ran out of the right bricks,” says first author Dennis Hsu, who used to work in Tavazoie’s lab and is now a physician-scientist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh. “You could still build the plane, but only if you changed the plans so they don’t need the missing bricks.”
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