by Researchers from the University of Notre Dame have discovered that the addition of a pre-ketone supplement, a component of the ketogenic diet, to a specific type of cancer therapy called immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy, significantly enhances the treatment’s effectiveness against prostate cancer in a laboratory setting. The findings were published in the journal Cancer Research.
Prostate cancer is the most prevalent cancer among American men, and although immunotherapy has shown remarkable success in treating other types of cancer, such as melanoma and lung cancer, it has been largely ineffective against prostate cancer. ICB therapy functions by obstructing the binding of certain proteins, allowing the body’s immune cells, T cells, to eliminate cancer cells.
Xin Lu, the John M. and Mary Jo Boler Collegiate Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, and her team have been investigating ways to overcome prostate cancer’s resistance to ICB therapy. Lu, who is also affiliated with the Boler-Parseghian Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases, explained, “Prostate cancer has been resistant to ICB therapy, and oncologists have been searching for ways to make it more effective. We believe that a dietary supplement might help overcome this resistance.”
Sean Murphy, a ’24 alumnus and doctoral student in Lu’s lab, was inspired by his personal experience following a ketogenic diet. Recognizing that cancer cells rely on sugar for growth, Murphy hypothesized that restricting carbohydrates in mouse models might hinder cancer progression.
Murphy designed an experiment with six groups: ICB therapy alone, ketogenic diet alone, pre-ketone supplement alone, the ketogenic diet with ICB therapy, the supplement with ICB therapy, and a control group. The results showed that ICB therapy alone had minimal impact on the tumors, as is typically the case with most prostate cancer patients. However, both the ketogenic diet with ICB therapy and the pre-ketone supplement with ICB therapy significantly reduced the cancer and extended the lives of the mouse models.
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1.Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2.We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
