4 ms·
It's interesting how this drug works: by depleting arginine. Apparently mesothelioma cells lose the ability to make arginine. I wonder if a low-arginine diet wo
by Metacelsus 3y ago
It's interesting how this drug works: by depleting arginine. Apparently mesothelioma cells lose the ability to make arginine. I wonder if a low-arginine diet would enhance the effect.
- hammock 3y agoYour body usually synthesizes all the arginine it needs, independent of dietary arginine
- xkcd-sucks 3y agoultimately whether it works or not is up to a pretty complex network of kinetics, but low-arginine diet doesn't seem too plausible because it can be shuttled around between cells to some degree via plasma membrane transporters, produced to some degree from proteolysis etc. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002231662303122X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002231662... etc) the approach, which is actually kind of nuts, supports this assumption: pegargiminase depletes by destroying arginine directly; it is fundamentally a super efficient arginine oxidizer coated in lube, more or less so it's like in principle most of your cells are making arginine and to some degree puking it out, this drug is chewing up all the free arginine floating around, the cells that can synthesize it are cool but the cells that can't synthesize it starve