A special diet could help slow the growth of one of the deadliest brain tumors

The key to slowing deadly brain tumors could be right on our plates.Gliomas are a group of tumors that develop in the brain or spinal cord and can range from slow-growing — like the one Busy Philipps was diagnosed with this year — to highly aggressive, like the ones John McCain, Beau Biden and Sophie Kinsella had.New research from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health may have found a way to slow down their growth — and it could come down to what people eat.A study published Tuesday found that the cancerous tumors, which grow quickly when supportive cells in the brain grow and divide uncontrollably, have the same metabolic flaw as a rare genetic disorder in children known as GAMT Deficiency.The researchers found that this flaw — which is producing a toxic chemical that changes the brain’s activity and fuels tumor growth — can be changed to slow growth using a specific dietary approach.In lab studies, the special medical diet used to treat the children was tested on mice, and it dramatically slowed cancer growth in the rodents.“The diet that we are considering for this trial is not really, say, a Mediterranean diet or a ketogenic diet,” Dr.Kalil Abdullah, director for central nervous system cancer at Northwell Health’s Brain Tumor Center, said.

“It’s a diet under medical supervision that restricts very specific types of food.”The team identified an extra chemical that tumors release into the brain, called guanidinoacetate (GAA), which makes nearby brain cells overactive.This extra activity appears to help tumor cells grow quickly, essentially allowing the tumor to “hijack” the brain’s own activity to help it survive.High levels of GAA were also present in children with GAMT deficiency, a rare condition in which the body cannot properly break down the chemical, causing seizures and epilepsy.The researchers used the dietary approach used to manage GAMT deficiency to see if it could also slow tumor growth in m...