Taurine could be an important fuel source for driving leukemia, flags new study

A scientific study by The Wilmot Cancer Institute investigators at the University of Rochester, UK, has identified taurine — which is found naturally in bone marrow, the brain, heart, and muscles, as well as foods like meats, fish, and eggs — as a key regulator of myeloid cancers such as leukemia.

The preclinical research published in the journal Nature indicates that scientists are a step closer to finding new ways to target leukemia.

The aggressive form of blood cancer has several subtypes, and survival rates vary.

Energy drink additive

The researchers were able to block the growth of leukemia in mouse models and human leukemia cell samples by using genetic tools to prevent taurine, a key ingredient in some energy drinks and protein powders, from entering cancer cells.

Scientists mapped to see what happens within the bone marrow and its ecosystem.

They discovered that taurine is produced by a subset of normal cells in the bone marrow microenvironment, the tissue inside bones where myeloid cancers begin and expand. Leukemia cells cannot make taurine themselves, so they rely on a taurine transporter (encoded by the SLC6A6 gene) to grab taurine from the bone marrow environment and deliver it to the cancer cells.

“We are very excited about these studies because they demonstrate that targeting uptake by myeloid leukemia cells may be a possible new avenue for treatment of these aggressive diseases,” says Bajaj, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Genetics and a member of Wilmot’s Cancer Microenvironment research program.

Researchers also discovered that taurine promotes glycolysis (a breakdown of glucose to produce energy) in leukemia cells to feed cancer growth. The authors said it was not known before that taurine might have a cancer-promoting role.

This study finds that taurine transporter expression is essential for the growth of multiple subtypes, including acute myeloid leukemia, chronic myeloid leukemia, and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), which all originate from blood stem cells in the bone marrow. 

Future studies are planned to investigate signals from the microenvironment that promote the transition of MDS, a precursor to leukemia, to acute leukemia.