Drugs that attacks enzymes that are know as PI3K are useful depending on the blood sugar level of the patient. A ketogenic diet is the perfect way to give patients a healthy diet as well as a better chance at fighting cancer.
Lewis C. Cantley is the director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center. He wrote about how drugs targeting PI3K are almost useless unless they get insulin under control in the patient. A group of scientists showed the effect of the diet and how it drastically helps the drug do its job.
Looking for effective clinical trials concerning PI3K, over 15 therapies have started in order to figure it out. Its been hard despite efforts, since “If we turn off the PI3K pathway, which promotes the growth of cancer cells, we should see a clinical response to these drugs, and we just don’t” as Benjamin D. Hopkins puts it.
In tests with Hopkins colleagues, they found that the drugs become useless when the insulin levels are high, because the PI3K becomes active again; which allows the tumors to survive. After realizing that they need a way to change insulin along with sugar levels, they switched fields and looked to an endocrinologist perspective and viewed the ketogenic diet.
Above all other methods used to prevent sudden cases when insulin would show signs of increased levels, the diet turned out to be exactly what they needed.
Tested on mice with the given diet, mice were not able to release glucose like they normally would with PI3K. This is perfect in stopping the cancer from growing and making cancer cells more sensitive to other treatments.
There is a possible danger with the diet, while watching the mice it shows that if the PI3K is not present it either had no effect or made conditions worsen rapidly.
It is important that when going through the diet and practicing on humans that health should be monitored very closely.
