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posted by mrpg on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the wow dept.

Cancer hijacks the microbiome to glut itself on glucose

"Leukemia cells create a diabetic-like condition that reduces glucose going to normal cells, and as a consequence, there is more glucose available for the leukemia cells. Literally, they are stealing glucose from normal cells to drive growth of the tumor," says Craig Jordan, PhD, investigator at University of Colorado Cancer Center, division chief of the Division of Hematology and the Nancy Carroll Allen Professor of Hematology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Like diabetes, cancer's strategies depend on insulin. Healthy cells need insulin to use glucose. In diabetes, either the pancreas under-produces insulin or tissues cannot not respond to insulin and so cells are left starved for energy while glucose builds up in the blood. The current study shows that leukemia goes about creating similar conditions of glucose buildup in two ways.

First, tumor cells trick fat cells into over-producing a protein called IGFBP1. This protein makes healthy cells less sensitive to insulin, meaning that when IGFBP1 is high, it takes more insulin to use glucose than it does when IGFBP1 is low. Unless the supply of insulin goes up, high IGFBP1 means that the glucose consumption of healthy cells goes down. (This protein may also be a link in the chain connecting cancer and obesity: The more fat cells, the more IGFBP1, and the more glucose is available to the cancer.)

Submitted via IRC for Bytram


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:12AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:12AM (#742662)

    So how come insulin isn't marketed as a weight loss drug?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:18PM (#742873)

    Screwing with the endocrine system isn't generally recommended.

    Take even melatonin for example. Produced in the pituitary gland in response to various stimuli (blue/reddish light for example) and the body's circadian rhythm. So if you're not getting sleepy when you should, why not take more? Well, one thing that happens when taking endocrine supplements is that the body downregulates the production of the hormone. We can see this in steroid abusers with shrunken testicles.

    Likely insulin supplements would result in treading water if not creating systemic insulin resistance. Had an experience like that with melatonin supplements, tried for a while but ultimately lost effectiveness so I ditched them and went back to diphenhydramine for sleep.