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Comment by jszymborski | Hacker News Reader

Well, this study passes the "we dumped a bunch of X on cancer cells in a petri dish and they did a funny thing" red flag test.

Xenographs (implanting human cancer cells into mice) have their own caveats (the immune system is almost always severely compromised), but this seems like a cool study. I'm no expert on oral cancers however.

Curious to see the implication of the neuronal cells here, I'm looking forward to reading the whole manuscript.

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Cancer cells can consume multiple energy sources, not exactly news here. Concluding that dietary palmitic acid is a problem is questionable. Palmitate is produced endogenously and dietary palmitic acid does not even influence tissue concentration [1].

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5682332/#B81

> Palmitate is produced endogenously and dietary palmitic acid does not even influence tissue concentration [1].

If there's no uptake by tissue, then wouldn't the tumor have a plentiful energy source once it vascularizes? (Assuming they can metabolize palmitic acid)

Yes, in addition to other free fatty acids, glucose and ketones.

Is nerve growth commonly considered critical in tumor growth and metastasis?

So much of this sounds weird to me and I'm not sure if it's my ignorance or if this is some wacky theory.

I've personally not come across it, but it just might be a blind spot for me (I've mostly studied breast and ovarian cancers).

It's why I'm interested to read the manuscript closely and see what they reference re: this neuronal growth.

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