Fundamentals of Starvation Therapy for Cancer for the Oncology Practice | Chapter 07 | Current Trends in Medicine and Medical Research Vol. 2
Cancer
is a serious disease that has used exhaustive efforts and exerted heavy
financial and scientific burdens to develop an understanding into the nature of
its’ various types, and to advance therapies and management protocols. It is
becoming acceptable that among the major methods that appeared in the
literature has been the use of starvation to reduce or even halt the survival
of cancer cells at the time when normal cells would be less dramatically
affected.
This
work is an attempt to give a comprehensive explanation of the effects of
general or selective starvation on cells and highlight the underlying molecular
mechanisms of starvation on various cells. The major aims are to understand and
to develop suitable and effective therapeutic methods based on nutritional
manipulations, for combating malignancies. Starvation modules generally include
general starvation, or restricted starvation, where the major modes include
glucose deprivation under normal or abnormal oxygenation, amino acid and
nucleic acid deprivation, and other selected nutritional precursors. There are
also experiments that studied the effects of combined deficiencies. In
addition, these artificial nutritional deficiencies have been tested for their
potential uses in boosting the effects of chemotherapeutic agents. Thus,
presented in this pre-working manual is a comprehensive and a unique account of
the literature on the experimental and clinical evidence that support the
efficiency of starvation therapy. The molecular mechanisms and cellular
alterations that accompany the starvation have been described along.
Nevertheless, negative effects of certain nutritional starvation modes have
also been described extensively along with much of their underlying cellular
mechanisms. Knowledge of these, and of the counter-measures undertaken by
malignant cells under starvation, may give leads as to what methods to avoid
among the available choices. They also serve as guidelines for research aiming
at developing means for antagonizing or neutralizing such unanticipated
mechanisms that generate the negative and undesired effects. This study
contains vital information that mark differences among various kinds of tumour
cells, and differences within one cell type under various growth stages and
conditions. Mostly, it represents a trial to collect together information on
starvation work in an attempt to draw lines for further work aimed at
developing and standardizing methods for treating cancer. Hence a method selected
may be unique to a tumour type and stage, with particular considerations for
any negative results expected especially with other cancer types. Hence, this
work serves as orientation for further organized research and clinical trials
which are required to optimize modes of therapy and conditions required per
cancer type. This work appears to be a first attempt to compile a vast amount
of scattered information into a translatable form that may aid in building up
and advancing therapeutic strategies for cancer.
Biography of author(s)
Fawwaz Al-Joudi
Department
of Clinical Biochemistry, University of Ontario Institute of Technology,
Faculty of Health Sciences, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
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