The key to slowing deadly brain tumors could be right on our plates.
Gliomas are a group of tumors that develop in the brain or spinal cord and can range from slow-growing — like the one Busy Philipps was diagnosed with this year — to highly aggressive, like the ones John McCain, Beau Biden and Sophie Kinsella had.
New research from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health may have found a way to slow down the growth of these tumors — and it could come down to what people eat.
A study published Tuesday found that high-grade gliomas, which grow quickly when supportive cells in the brain grow and divide uncontrollably, have the same metabolic flaw as a rare genetic disorder in children known as GAMT Deficiency.
The researchers found that this flaw — which is producing a toxic chemical that changes the brain’s activity and fuels tumor growth — can be changed to slow growth using a specific dietary approach.
In lab studies, the special medical diet used to treat the children was tested on mice, and it dramatically slowed cancer growth in the rodents.
“The diet that we are considering for this trial is not really, say, a Mediterranean diet or a ketogenic diet,” Dr. Kalil Abdullah, director for central nervous system cancer at Northwell Health’s Brain Tumor Center, said. “It’s a diet under medical supervision that restricts very specific types of food.”
The team identified an extra chemical that tumors release into the brain, called guanidinoacetate (GAA), which makes nearby brain cells overactive.
This extra activity appears to help tumor cells grow quickly, essentially allowing the tumor to “hijack” the brain’s own activity to help it survive.
High levels of GAA were also present in children with GAMT deficiency, a rare condition in which the body cannot properly break down the chemical, causing seizures and epilepsy.
The researchers used the dietary approach used to manage GAMT deficiency to see if it could also slow tumor growth in mice.
Along with turning off the enzyme (AGAT) that makes GAA in tumor cells, the mice were fed a diet that restricted the amino acid arginine and added extra ornithine, another amino acid.
Amino acids are the building blocks of protein, and are found in many foods including meat, eggs and grains.
Using extra tissue from tumors removed during brain surgery, the team was able to detect particular DNA, chemicals and other components of the tumors.
“We found that one particular molecule, in this case, GAA, was really wildly different in glioblastoma than it was in other kinds of brain tumor or in the normal brain,” Abdullah said. “And once we discovered that, we started to look into why.”
The findings suggest the diet could potentially be used before treatment for glioblastoma, although it has not yet been established as a treatment for people with the disease.
“Because the human body adapts so quickly, we can have patients change their diet for just three to five days before surgery,” Abdullah said.
“And then we’ll be able to do the surgery as planned, but we’ll be able to measure this molecule and see if the diet has already made a difference.”
Abdullah and his team plan to put their findings into practice with a clinical trial beginning in 2027.
