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When cancer needs what's non-essential

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The non-essential amino acids serine and glycine are critical for proliferative metabolism. A study in Nature now finds that dietary serine and glycine deprivation inhibits growth of some tumours. Whether this dietary intervention is effective depends on both the oncogenic context and tumour tissue of origin.

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Figure 1: Sources and utilization of serine and glycine in mammalian cells and impact of oncogenic alterations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mark R. Sullivan and Matthew G. Vander Heiden are at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Mark R. Sullivan & Matthew G. Vander Heiden

  2. Matthew G. Vander Heiden is also at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA,

    Matthew G. Vander Heiden

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  1. Mark R. Sullivan
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  2. Matthew G. Vander Heiden
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Correspondence to Matthew G. Vander Heiden.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Sullivan, M., Vander Heiden, M. When cancer needs what's non-essential. Nat Cell Biol 19, 418–420 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb3523

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