Along with genetic factors they contribute to increased metastases A diet rich in 'bad' fats, or from meat and cheese, causes the prostate tumor to spread and form metastases. But this process can be blocked by using drugs against obesity. To identify the mechanism, partly because of genetics and partly for nutrition, there are two researches published in Nature Communications and Nature Genetics.
Prostate cancer usually grows quite slowly, but previous studies have suggested that people who follow a 'western' diet have twice and a half times higher risk of dying of this cancer than those who follow a diet of fruits and vegetables. Researchers at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Harvard Medical School, Boston, led by Pier Paolo Pandolfi, have shown that the risk of prostate cancer progression is closely related to the reduction of two tumor suppressive genes, PTEN and PML: their absence changes the cell metabolism by increasing the production of lipids or fats
They then focused on the role of fat in the promotion of prostate tumor metastasis, but noted that laboratory rats were not a good study model because they presented a mildly aggressive disease. They hypnotized that it was the power to protect them: real rats eat essentially vegetables.
So they tried to pour saturated fats into their diet, such as hamburgers and fry, and for the first time, metastases appeared in mice with 'obtuse' tumors, namely, no metastatic. The good news is that there is a molecule that can fight the process. The researchers actually administered fatostatin mice under study for treating obesity. "The obesity drug has blocked lipogenesis (or fat synthesis) in a fantastic way and the tumors regressed and did not metastasize," says Pandolfi.
At the same time, researchers at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR) of the Italian University of Switzerland, led by Andrea Alimonti, have published a second study that shows how lipid metabolism is the "gasoline" of prostate cancer
