What turns breast cancer cells aggressive? Chinese team may have found the key

Their findings could open up a new avenue for precision therapy for what is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women – through starving the tumours of this essential building block for protein.

The precise metabolic communication through which arginine exerts its effects within the tumour micro-environment – or the complex cellular ecosystem influencing tumour behaviour – has long eluded scientists.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Hangzhou Institute of Medicine and Sun Yat-sen University may now have an answer.

“We reveal that the metabolic interplay between cancer cells and macrophages plays a dominant role in arginine-driven breast cancer progression,” the researchers wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Cell on April 3.

Macrophages are a type of white blood cell that help to clear out dead cells and stimulate other cells involved in immune function.