Fundamentals of Starvation Therapy for Cancer for the Oncology Practice

Cancer is a serious disease that has used exhaustive efforts and exerted heavy financial and scientific
burdens to develop an understanding into the nature of its’ various types, and to advance therapies and
management protocols. It is becoming acceptable that among the major methods that appeared in the
literature has been the use of starvation to reduce or even halt the survival of cancer cells at the time
when normal cells would be less dramatically affected.
This work is an attempt to give a comprehensive explanation of the effects of general or selective
starvation on cells and highlight the underlying molecular mechanisms of starvation on various cells.
The major aims are to understand and to develop suitable and effective therapeutic methods based on
nutritional manipulations, for combating malignancies. Starvation modules generally include general
starvation, or restricted starvation, where the major modes include glucose deprivation under normal or
abnormal oxygenation, amino acid and nucleic acid deprivation, and other selected nutritional
precursors. There are also experiments that studied the effects of combined deficiencies. In addition,
these artificial nutritional deficiencies have been tested for their potential uses in boosting the effects of
chemotherapeutic agents. Thus, presented in this pre-working manual is a comprehensive and a
unique account of the literature on the experimental and clinical evidence that support the efficiency of
starvation therapy. The molecular mechanisms and cellular alterations that accompany the starvation
have been described along. Nevertheless, negative effects of certain nutritional starvation modes have
also been described extensively along with much of their underlying cellular mechanisms. Knowledge of
these, and of the counter-measures undertaken by malignant cells under starvation, may give leads as
to what methods to avoid among the available choices. They also serve as guidelines for research
aiming at developing means for antagonizing or neutralizing such unanticipated mechanisms that
generate the negative and undesired effects. This study contains vital information that mark differences
among various kinds of tumour cells, and differences within one cell type under various growth stages
and conditions. Mostly, it represents a trial to collect together information on starvation work in an
attempt to draw lines for further work aimed at developing and standardizing methods for treating
cancer. Hence a method selected may be unique to a tumour type and stage, with particular
considerations for any negative results expected especially with other cancer types. Hence, this work
serves as orientation for further organized research and clinical trials which are required to optimize
modes of therapy and conditions required per cancer type. This work appears to be a first attempt to
compile a vast amount of scattered information into a translatable form that may aid in building up and
advancing therapeutic strategies for cancer.