PUBLICDOMAINIMAGES, DEBORA CARTAGENA UCSDCPFor the second time this month, scientists have reported that antioxidant supplementation sped up cancer growth in mice with melanoma. In the latest study, published this week (October 14) in Nature, researchers fed mice a common dietary supplement and the animals ended up with more tumors and more widespread cancers.
“We discovered that metastasizing melanoma cells experience very high levels of oxidative stress, which leads to the death of most metastasizing cells,” Sean Morrison, director of the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said in a press release. “Administration of antioxidants to the mice allowed more of the metastasizing melanoma cells to survive, increasing metastatic disease burden.”
Morrison’s group gave mice N-acetylcysteine (NAC), an antioxidant used in some body-building supplements. In a study published last week (October 7) in Science Translational Medicine, Martin Bergo’s team at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden also gave mice with melanoma NAC and discovered twice as many lymph node metastases as mice on a normal diet.
“The challenges will be to understand how ...
