Scientists find fatty acid that can kill cancer cells
In a major breakthrough in the fight against cancer, scientists have demonstrated that a fatty acid known as dihomogamma-linolenic acid, or DGLA, can kill cancer cells in humans. The study showed that dietary ingestion of the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) dihomogamma-linolenic acid can trigger ferroptosis in an animal model and in actual human cancer cells.
Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent type of cell death that was discovered in recent years and is closely related to many disease processes. The researchers pointed out that while dietary lipids impact development, homeostasis, and disease, the links between specific dietary fats and cell fates are poorly understood.
“If you could deliver DGLA precisely to a cancer cell, it could promote ferroptosis and lead to tumor cell death. Also, just knowing that this fat promotes ferroptosis might also affect how we think about conditions such as kidney disease and neurodegeneration where we want to prevent this type of cell death,” Jennifer Watts, a Washington State University associate professor and corresponding author on the paper, said.
Watts, who has been studying dietary fats including DGLA for nearly twenty years, using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as an animal model, said this discovery has many implications, including a step toward a potential treatment for cancer.
C. elegans is a microscopic worm that is often used in molecular research because it is transparent and allows scientists to easily study cell-level activity in a whole animal over its relatively short lifespan. Results found in the C. elegans cells are also often transferable to human cells.
The researchers found that feeding nematodes a diet of DGLA-laden bacteria killed all the germ cells in the worms as well as the stem cells that make the germ cells. The way the cells died carried many signs of ferroptosis, said the study.
The team of researchers collaborated with Scott Dixon of Stanford University to find out if the results would translate to human cells. Dixon has been studying ferroptosis and its potential for battling cancer for many years.
Taking what they had learned from the nematode work, the researchers showed that DGLA could induce ferroptosis in human cancer cells, the study noted.
The researchers also observed interaction with another fatty acid class, called an ether lipid, that had a protective effect against DGLA. They found that when they took out the ether lipids, the cells died faster in the presence of DGLA.
Additionally, the team also showed that C. elegans can be a useful animal research model in the study of ferroptosis. The findings have been published on Developmental Cell.