Asparagus Among Foods Linked To Breast Cancer Spread In New Study

LOS ANGELES, CA — Women who have an often deadly type of breast cancer may want to curb their intake of asparagus and other foods rich in the amino acid asparagine, according to a new multicenter study. Doing so may dramatically reduce the spread of triple-negative breast cancer and, perhaps, many other metastatic cancers, scientists said.

Asparagus isn’t the only food common in diets that contain asparagine, according to the study published Wednesday in the medical journal Nature. Others include dairy, whey, beef, poultry, eggs, fish, seafood, asparagus, potatoes, legumes, nuts, seeds, soy and whole grains. Foods low in asparagine include most fruits and vegetables.

Among other techniques, scientists at more than a dozen institutions restricted asparagine in laboratory mice with triple-negative breast cancer cells, which grow and spread faster than most other cancer cells and have a higher-than-average mortality rate.

When the mice were given foods rich in asparagine, the cancer cells spread more rapidly. When those foods were restricted, metastasis — that’s when cancer cells spread beyond the primary site — was limited.

The scientists are considering conducting an early-phase clinical trial in which healthy participants would consume a low-asparagine diet. If the diet results in decreased levels of asparagine, the next scientific step would involve a clinical trial with cancer patients. That trial likely would use use not only dietary restrictions, but also chemotherapy and immunotherapy, the researchers said.

"Our study adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests diet can influence the course of the disease," Simon Knott, associate director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and one of two lead authors of the study, said in a news release announcing the study.

If further studies show limiting foods containing asparagine arrests the spread of cancer cells in humans, it could give add a new weapon in the arsenal to fight the disease, the research suggests.

"The study results are extremely suggestive that changes in diet might impact both how an individual responds to primary therapy and their chances of lethal disease spreading later in life," said the study’s senior author, Gregory J. Hannon, professor of Cancer Molecular Biology and director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge in England.

The research was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health and the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

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