Study: Fat Cells Inactivate Cancer Chemotherapy

Fat Cells Inactivate Cancer Chemotherapy

The results showed that adipocytes markedly blocked the accumulation of daunorubicin in the ALL cells. The fat cells effectively absorbed the drug from the tumor microenvironment and metabolized it into the largely inactive compound daunorubicinol, which is far less toxic to leukemia cells. As a result, ALL cells treated with daunorubicin in the presence of fat cells were able to survive and proliferate. Subsequent studies in mice confirmed that the conversion of daunorubicin to daunorubicinol also occurs in adipose tissue in vivo.

These results are published in Molecular Cancer Research, in a paper entitled "Adipocytes Sequester and Metabolize the Chemotherapeutic Daunorubicin."

“To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that adipocytes metabolize and inactivate a therapeutic drug,” the researchers write. “Adipocyte-mediated daunorubicin metabolism reduces active drug concentration in the TME. These results could be clinically important for adipocyte-rich cancer microenvironments such as omentum, breast, and marrow.”