A dietary intervention in combination with targeted drugs for triple negative breast cancer

Research area: Better treatments

Professor Karen Vousden and her team are studying how triple negative breast cancers adapt to survive even when they are starved of a key survival nutrient called serine. They hope to identify new targeted therapy options that could work in combination with a low serine diet to treat this aggressive type of breast cancer effectively .

In this section

What's the challenge?

Triple negative breast cancer is a particularly aggressive type of primary breast cancer. Compared to other types, it has a high rate of recurrence in the first few years and is more likely to spread to other organs. We call this secondary breast cancer, and it’s currently incurable. About a third of triple negative breast cancers go on to develop secondary breast cancer.

Triple negative breast cancer lacks the proteins that are targeted by many of the available targeted breast cancer treatments. So, we urgently need new ways to treat this type of breast cancer.

Breast cancer cells rely on nutrients like serine to grow and survive. Our previous research identified that diets that lack serine could be used to slow the growth of breast cancer. But some triple negative breast cells can adapt to these diets and continue to grow by relying on other ways to survive. We now want to understand how these cells survive without serine and use drugs to target these changes. In the future, this could lead to diet interventions in combination with targeted therapies to treat triple negative breast cancer. This type of disease urgently needs new treatment options, and our research could provide patients with diet interventions that they can control.

Professor Karen Vousden

What's the science behind the project?

Over the last decade, Karen’s work has shown that many cancers depend on a nutrient called serine for their ability to grow and spread to other organs. The team found that when mice were fed a diet without serine, the growth of many cancers was slowed – which improved survival. But for triple negative breast cancer cells, the growth was slowed only very slightly. The team think this is because triple negative breast cancer cells can adapt to a reduction in serine levels and rely on other ways to grow and survive.

The team found that triple negative breast cancer cells which adapt to low serine rely on their ability to make their own serine. And when they used a drug to inhibit the cell’s ability to make their own serine, the cells died. So, the team have identified a weakness in triple negative breast cancer cells which could be used as a drug target.

Now the team want to identify what else these serine-deprived cells rely on. And if targeting these weaknesses with drugs could be combined with a diet intervention that lacks serine to treat triple negative breast cancer cells.

In this project, the team will identify proteins that triple negative breast cancers depend on to survive when they are deprived of serine. They’ll then investigate these proteins in more detail to understand exactly how they keep the cells alive. And then look at the effect of tumour growth and spread in mice treated with drugs that target the proteins in combination with diets lacking serine.

What difference will this project make?

People with triple negative breast cancer urgently need new and improved therapies. This research could lead to both new drug targets for them and a diet intervention that people can control at home.