Pancreatic cancer cells feed off hyaluronic acid

[multigraincracker]

I have friends that have died from pancreatic cancer, seems like lots of them.

https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/lab-report/pancreatic-cancer-cells-feed-off-hyaluronic-acid?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Read%20more&utm_campaign=2019-09-16LabWeeklyDigest

Often found in beauty products and wellness supplements, hyaluronic acid attracts and retains water well. It’s also a major player in the physiology of pancreatic tumors.

Hyaluronic acid, or HA, is a known presence in pancreatic tumors, but a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center shows that hyaluronic acid also acts as food to the cancer cells. These findings, recently published in eLife, provide insight into how pancreatic cancer cells grow and indicate new possibilities to treat them.

“A central driving theme in my research lab is that pancreatic cancer doesn't respond to the common arsenal of treatment approaches. We need to think about this challenge differently,” said Costas Lyssiotis, Ph.D., the lead investigator on the study. He and his team study the metabolism of pancreatic cancer in preclinical models: how cells obtain nutrients and the spectrum of nutrients they utilize to fuel growth and enable therapeutic resistance.

The tumor microenvironment, or the cells that make up the tumor, are a combination of many different cell types, some malignant, some not. A pancreatic tumor’s microenvironment is highly stromal, meaning the mass itself is mostly comprised of connective tissue and non-cancerous immune cells.