(dailyRx)

Cancer doesn't like oxygen. Unlike humans, this devilish disease thrives in low-oxygen environments. Scientists are taking advantage of this fact to kick cancer cells all the way to kingdom come.

Researchers were able to shrink tumors in mice when they blocked a protein that helps cancer cells grow where oxygen doesn't like to go.

Always try to increase your fresh vegetable intake.

This enzyme that's called M2 isoform of pyruvate kinase - or PKM2 for short - is jacked up in cancer cells. This protein acts like a generator to pump energy into the nasty, hard-to-breathe infrastructure of tumors.

Phillip A. Sharp, Ph.D., Institute Professor at David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with MIT Graduate Fellow, Michael Goldberg, Ph.D. have discovered that blocking PKM2 starves and kills cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed.

They found that, "Crippling PKM2 caused established tumors in mice to melt away,"  according to a news release describing the study.

The authors note that if this same cell starvation scenario occurs in humans, the possibilities are impressive. 

This approach could be used to effectively treat all sorts of cancers, with the added benefit of producing only minimal side effects.

The study appears in the January 23, 2012 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Cancer

Cancer is diagnosed in over 12 million people each year, kills over 7 million and one out of every three people will be diagnosed with an invasive cancer at some point in their lifetime in the United States. Cancer is a group of diseases classified by abnormal and uncontrolled cellular growth in a particular organ or tissue type in the body.

Cancer is caused by a multitude of factors including genetics and infections, but a majority of cancers can be attributed to environmental causes, such as smoking, and being exposed to carcinogens or radiation.