300 oranges� worth of vitamin C impairs cancer cells
The power of vitamin C could one day be harnessed to fight colorectal cancer, according to a new study published in Science.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in the US, with about 93,090 new cases each year. Around 50% of those cases involve mutations in the KRAS and BRAF genes; these forms of the disease are more aggressive and do not respond well to current therapies or chemotherapy.
Vitamin C is generally thought to improve health because of its antioxidant effect, which prevents or delays some types of cell damage.
However, a team led by Dr. Lewis Cantley, of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, NY, discovered that in the case of the KRAS and BRAF forms of CRC, the opposite was true. In these cancer cells, high-dose vitamin Cs caused oxidation, resulting in what could be a beneficial effect for patients.
They found that in cell cultures and mice, high doses of vitamin C - equivalent to around 300 oranges - impaired the growth of KRAS and BRAF mutant colorectal tumors.
They now hope that the findings could lead to the development of new treatments and provide critical insights into who would most benefit from them.
In an oxygen-rich environment such as human arteries, a fraction of vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, becomes oxidized and is transformed into a new compound called dehydroascorbic acid (DHA).
Scientists have known for some time that a specific membrane protein, known as glucose transporter GLUT1, enables both glucose and DHA to enter cells, but that ascorbic acid cannot do so. What DHA does once inside the cells remained a mystery.
The current study reveals that DHA acts as a Trojan horse. Once inside, natural antioxidants in the cancer cell attempt to convert the DHA back to ascorbic acid; in the process, these antioxidants are depleted, and the cell dies from oxidative stress.
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