Can a keto diet enhance therapy for neuroblastoma?
In 2019, we awarded a small grant of nearly £5000 to Professor Robert Falconer and Xiaoxiao Guo, University of Bradford.
This research grant enabled them to explore the potential for a ketogenic diet to enhance neuroblastoma minimum residual disease therapy. Let’s find out more.
What is a ketogenic diet?
Natural fats can be found in avocados.
A ketogenic or ‘Keto’ diet is a low carbohydrate and high fat eating plan.
It has been one of the most popular diet trends of recent years, with celebrity supporters including Halle Berry, the Kardashians and Gwyneth Paltrow.
But it’s also been used since the 1920s to treat children and adults with epilepsy to help minimise seizures.
(Source: Epilepsy Society)
How does a keto diet work?
Our bodies use glucose for energy. We get this glucose from carbohydrates such as bread or pasta. When your body doesn’t have enough of these carbohydrates, you start to burn fat cells for energy instead - a process called ‘ketosis’.
By eating fewer carbs and more fat, the body mostly uses these ketones instead of glucose for energy.
How could a keto diet help children with neuroblastoma?
Ketogenic diets have benefitted patients with diseases including epilepsy, but there is also evidence that it can help cancer patients too.
The aim of Guo and Falconer’s project was to take the initial steps to explore whether this type of diet could enhance therapy for children with neuroblastoma.
Recent studies have suggested that a keto diet could be used after primary treatments for neuroblastoma, to help reduce the chance of relapse. This therapy could be used to target tumours in which cellular growth is highly dependent on glycolysis, the breaking down of glucose.
Research has also shown that a ketogenic diet can help to kill neuroblastoma cells which cannot use ketone bodies as an energy source. Ketone bodies are produced by the liver from fatty acids during periods of fasting.
However, it takes weeks for ketone bodies to adapt, so a ketogenic diet would not be ideal for treating high risk cancer alone.
What did the research show?
Guo and Falconer investigated whether a ketogenic diet could enhance the effects of the anti-cancer drugs 13-cis-RA and dinutuximab. They assessed the sensitivity of MYCN and non-MYCN amplified neuroblastoma cells to the drugs, in various ketogenic diet conditions.
The data on the whole, provided early evidence that a ketogenic diet does have potential for use as a supplementary treatment to 13-cis-RA in non-MYCN amplified and MYCN amplified neuroblastoma.
What happens next?
From this grant, the research team will be looking to carry out more extensive studies to understand the mechanisms underlying these effects and to explore its full therapeutic potential.
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