When you swallow a vitamin or eat a meal, the nutrients you’ve ingested flow into your stomach, break down, and enter your bloodstream. But what happens next? How do nutrients move from your arteries into the cells where they actually do their jobs? What determines whether some nutrients go to the brain, while others power your immune system instead?
There are about 5,000 different metabolites—all those nutritional end products—in human blood, and scientists still don’t know how most of them make their way into cells. But this knowledge is critical for connecting the dots between what we consume and how our bodies maintain health—and for taking the guesswork out of the $200 billion supplement industry, which revolves around the assumption that dietary elements end up where they are needed.
It also could change how we treat cancers, which suck up nutrients faster and in higher amounts than normal cells, giving them the fuel they need to grow and spread.
Kivanç Birsoy, head of the Laboratory of Metabolic Regulation and Genetics at Rockefeller University, has been mapping out nutrient highways with a meticulous curiosity and a bold vision. His lab focuses on understanding transporters—tiny protein channels that act like specialized delivery trucks, grabbing molecular cargo from your bloodstream and shuttling them into and within your cells.
In this interview, Birsoy talks about why understanding these transporters is so important to human health and disease.
You’ve noted that much of the current science around nutrition isn’t very informative. A big part of the motivation for your research is to change that. Can you explain what you mean?
Most of the vitamins and supplements you see in stores haven’t been studied in ways that actually show how they work in the body. Take vitamin C, for example. Lots of people swear it helps them fight off colds, but the studies are all over the place. Some suggest it’s helpful, others say it’s useless. Even when something does seem helpful, we rarely know the right dosage or who will benefit most.
The problem is that most studies are just correlations. They might show that people who take a certain supplement are healthier, but they can’t prove the supplement is what made the difference. To really understand what a certain nutrient does—and doesn’t do—we have to figure out how and when nutrients enter our cells and what happens to them once they’re inside. That’s what my lab does.
What first drew you to study the intersection of nutrition and cancer?
I was fascinated by how resourceful cancer cells are. They grow and spread at such an intense rate, far beyond what normal cells do, which means they need a lot more fuel. But the interesting thing about tumors is that they don’t just rely on the fuel that is already available. They actually rewire their own metabolic machinery to grab more nutrients from their environment or to survive even when resources are scarce.
Early in my career, I realized that if we could figure out exactly what nutrients cancer cells need and how they’re getting them, we might be able to cut off their supply.
Has your research suggested that targeting cancer cells’ nutrients in this way will indeed be possible?
Yes, we’ve found some Achilles’ heels in cancer cells that we think we can use to stop the growth or spread of tumors. In one study, my lab showed how cancer cells can turn on a gene that lets them suck up the amino acid aspartate from their surroundings. Cells that have this gene grow faster. Now, we’re looking at drugs that interfere with a cancer’s ability to produce or take in aspartate.
In other work, we discovered that some cancer cells rely heavily on an antioxidant called glutathione to protect themselves from damage and help them spread to other parts of the body. They need much more glutathione than normal cells do. When we block the transporter responsible for bringing glutathione into cancer cells, we can stop the cells from spreading.
This kind of information is vital—conventional wisdom tells people that antioxidants are good for them. And generally speaking, they are. But there are situations—like some cancers—where certain antioxidants could actually fuel disease.
By targeting these pathways with drugs, we might be able to directly kill cancer cells—or to enhance the immune system’s ability to attack cancer cells, especially if we can prevent those cells from hoarding the nutrients they use to hide from immune detection.
How are you figuring out which transporters work with which nutrients?
It’s a huge challenge because we’re talking about thousands of different transporters, each specialized to move specific nutrients. We start by looking at genetic studies of humans. If someone has a mutation in a gene linked to a transporter, it often shows up as a problem with certain nutrient levels in their blood.
Once we identify a potential transporter or sensor, we test it by removing the gene from isolated cells or animal models. That’s what we did when we discovered SLC25A39, the transporter for glutathione. Initially, we looked for proteins that responded to changes in glutathione levels. Then we confirmed that SLC25A39 was the right transporter by blocking it and seeing that cells were suddenly starved of glutathione.
It turns out SLC25A39 isn’t just a transporter—it’s also a sensor that helps cells keep their glutathione levels balanced, which is crucial because problems with glutathione transport have been linked to conditions like cancer, neurodegeneration, and even aging.
So these transporters aren’t only important for cancer, but many other aspects of health and disease. What other areas has your lab looked at?
Recently, we found a transporter responsible for moving a vitamin-like lipid called choline into cells. Scientists knew that when a person has a mutation in a particular transporter gene, it causes the rare disease posterior column ataxia with retinitis pigmentosa (PCARP), which leads to blindness and neurodegeneration. But they didn’t know why. We showed that it is because cells can’t get enough choline when the transporter isn’t working properly.
The best part is, this isn’t just a fascinating discovery—it could also be life-changing. We’re already working with doctors to design clinical trials that use high levels of choline to slow down or even stop the progression of blindness in people with this disorder.
We are also looking at how nutrient transporters move molecules into mitochondria, which are the structures within cells that act like power plants, turning nutrients into energy. We want to understand how mitochondria absorb and process these nutrients, which could be key to treating disorders linked to mitochondrial dysfunction, which also includes neurodegeneration and aging.
What keeps you excited about this field?
Many transporters are associated with diseases and drug targets. The big idea is that by mapping out how transporters work, we can develop better drugs and use nutritional supplements in more targeted ways. And we may be able to use this information to customize dietary intake to improve health outcomes. That requires a lot of basic biology research, but could ultimately impact millions of lives. We’re already seeing it.
Citation:
Q&A: Researcher discusses mapping how nutrients move through the body to treat cancer (2025, June 11)
retrieved 11 June 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-qa-discusses-nutrients-body-cancer.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
When you swallow a vitamin or eat a meal, the nutrients you’ve ingested flow into your stomach, break down, and enter your bloodstream. But what happens next? How do nutrients move from your arteries into the cells where they actually do their jobs? What determines whether some nutrients go to the brain, while others power your immune system instead?
There are about 5,000 different metabolites—all those nutritional end products—in human blood, and scientists still don’t know how most of them make their way into cells. But this knowledge is critical for connecting the dots between what we consume and how our bodies maintain health—and for taking the guesswork out of the $200 billion supplement industry, which revolves around the assumption that dietary elements end up where they are needed.
It also could change how we treat cancers, which suck up nutrients faster and in higher amounts than normal cells, giving them the fuel they need to grow and spread.
Kivanç Birsoy, head of the Laboratory of Metabolic Regulation and Genetics at Rockefeller University, has been mapping out nutrient highways with a meticulous curiosity and a bold vision. His lab focuses on understanding transporters—tiny protein channels that act like specialized delivery trucks, grabbing molecular cargo from your bloodstream and shuttling them into and within your cells.
In this interview, Birsoy talks about why understanding these transporters is so important to human health and disease.
You’ve noted that much of the current science around nutrition isn’t very informative. A big part of the motivation for your research is to change that. Can you explain what you mean?
Most of the vitamins and supplements you see in stores haven’t been studied in ways that actually show how they work in the body. Take vitamin C, for example. Lots of people swear it helps them fight off colds, but the studies are all over the place. Some suggest it’s helpful, others say it’s useless. Even when something does seem helpful, we rarely know the right dosage or who will benefit most.
The problem is that most studies are just correlations. They might show that people who take a certain supplement are healthier, but they can’t prove the supplement is what made the difference. To really understand what a certain nutrient does—and doesn’t do—we have to figure out how and when nutrients enter our cells and what happens to them once they’re inside. That’s what my lab does.
What first drew you to study the intersection of nutrition and cancer?
I was fascinated by how resourceful cancer cells are. They grow and spread at such an intense rate, far beyond what normal cells do, which means they need a lot more fuel. But the interesting thing about tumors is that they don’t just rely on the fuel that is already available. They actually rewire their own metabolic machinery to grab more nutrients from their environment or to survive even when resources are scarce.
Early in my career, I realized that if we could figure out exactly what nutrients cancer cells need and how they’re getting them, we might be able to cut off their supply.
Has your research suggested that targeting cancer cells’ nutrients in this way will indeed be possible?
Yes, we’ve found some Achilles’ heels in cancer cells that we think we can use to stop the growth or spread of tumors. In one study, my lab showed how cancer cells can turn on a gene that lets them suck up the amino acid aspartate from their surroundings. Cells that have this gene grow faster. Now, we’re looking at drugs that interfere with a cancer’s ability to produce or take in aspartate.
In other work, we discovered that some cancer cells rely heavily on an antioxidant called glutathione to protect themselves from damage and help them spread to other parts of the body. They need much more glutathione than normal cells do. When we block the transporter responsible for bringing glutathione into cancer cells, we can stop the cells from spreading.
This kind of information is vital—conventional wisdom tells people that antioxidants are good for them. And generally speaking, they are. But there are situations—like some cancers—where certain antioxidants could actually fuel disease.
By targeting these pathways with drugs, we might be able to directly kill cancer cells—or to enhance the immune system’s ability to attack cancer cells, especially if we can prevent those cells from hoarding the nutrients they use to hide from immune detection.
How are you figuring out which transporters work with which nutrients?
It’s a huge challenge because we’re talking about thousands of different transporters, each specialized to move specific nutrients. We start by looking at genetic studies of humans. If someone has a mutation in a gene linked to a transporter, it often shows up as a problem with certain nutrient levels in their blood.
Once we identify a potential transporter or sensor, we test it by removing the gene from isolated cells or animal models. That’s what we did when we discovered SLC25A39, the transporter for glutathione. Initially, we looked for proteins that responded to changes in glutathione levels. Then we confirmed that SLC25A39 was the right transporter by blocking it and seeing that cells were suddenly starved of glutathione.
It turns out SLC25A39 isn’t just a transporter—it’s also a sensor that helps cells keep their glutathione levels balanced, which is crucial because problems with glutathione transport have been linked to conditions like cancer, neurodegeneration, and even aging.
So these transporters aren’t only important for cancer, but many other aspects of health and disease. What other areas has your lab looked at?
Recently, we found a transporter responsible for moving a vitamin-like lipid called choline into cells. Scientists knew that when a person has a mutation in a particular transporter gene, it causes the rare disease posterior column ataxia with retinitis pigmentosa (PCARP), which leads to blindness and neurodegeneration. But they didn’t know why. We showed that it is because cells can’t get enough choline when the transporter isn’t working properly.
The best part is, this isn’t just a fascinating discovery—it could also be life-changing. We’re already working with doctors to design clinical trials that use high levels of choline to slow down or even stop the progression of blindness in people with this disorder.
We are also looking at how nutrient transporters move molecules into mitochondria, which are the structures within cells that act like power plants, turning nutrients into energy. We want to understand how mitochondria absorb and process these nutrients, which could be key to treating disorders linked to mitochondrial dysfunction, which also includes neurodegeneration and aging.
What keeps you excited about this field?
Many transporters are associated with diseases and drug targets. The big idea is that by mapping out how transporters work, we can develop better drugs and use nutritional supplements in more targeted ways. And we may be able to use this information to customize dietary intake to improve health outcomes. That requires a lot of basic biology research, but could ultimately impact millions of lives. We’re already seeing it.
Citation:
Q&A: Researcher discusses mapping how nutrients move through the body to treat cancer (2025, June 11)
retrieved 11 June 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-qa-discusses-nutrients-body-cancer.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
