Blocking Fatty Acids Results in Slow Progression of Prostate Cancer

CLAYTON, AUSTRALIA – In an important study, it has been found that blocking fatty acids could help in the slow progression of prostate cancer. The research was carried out by Renea Taylor, the deputy director of the Cancer program at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute in Clayton, Australia, and Prof. Matthew Watt, the head of the Physiology Department at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Their team revealed that prostate cancer spreads slow but it is very difficult to prevent it from reaching an aggressive stage.

The motive of the researchers was to determine what fuels a tumour to become so aggressive and how prostate cancer metabolism differs from that of the other cancers. Renea Taylor highlighted that the research results hinted towards fatty acids. She said, “There is a strong link between obesity, diet, and poor outcomes in men who develop prostate cancer. In particular, those men who consume more saturated fatty acids seem to have more aggressive cancer.” Hence, it leads to scientists more closely the role of fatty acids in prostate tumour growth.

Scientists took human tissue samples from people with prostate cancer and grafted them onto mice. This experiment concluded that people with prostate cancer had high ingestion of fatty acids which lead to a higher mass of tumour. It was the fatty acid transporter, CD36 which supported these metabolic changes. Blocking CD36 could lead to slow growth of prostate cancer. In the next step, the researchers deleted the gene responsible for creating this transporter and examined the effects in the rodents with prostate cancer. It was found that eliminating the gene decreased the signaling lipids that promote tumor growth and slowed down the progression of prostate cancer.

Hence, the study concluded that CD36-mediated fatty acid promotes prostate cancer and suggest that targeting fatty acids ingestion might be an effective strategy for treating prostate cancer.