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Title: | Ketosis Enhances Murine Natural Killer Cells’ Anti-Breast Cancer Phenotype In Vitro |
Authors: | Chen, Rachel |
Advisors: | Kang, Yibin |
Department: | Molecular Biology |
Certificate Program: | Global Health and Health Policy Program |
Class Year: | 2024 |
Abstract: | Breast cancer is a widespread disease that has burdened women's health for centuries, and thus has been a major focus in cancer research. Recently, ketosis-inducing diets that elevate blood ketone concentrations have been described as safe and feasible interventions to improve breast cancer prognosis, quality of life, and the accessibility of immunosuppressive tumor environments to active cytotoxic immune cells.1–6 Although T cell immunity has been shown to be enhanced upon in vitro addition of the primary ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate, the effects of ketosis on other immune cell populations remains unclear.7 A previous study demonstrated that natural killer (NK) cells, an innate immune cell subset, were enriched in breast cancer patients in ketosis.1 It was hypothesized that NK cells respond to ketogenic conditions with increased maturation, proliferation, interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) release, and cytotoxicity. This hypothesis was investigated using an in vitro model of murine breast cancer. Specifically, the effects of beta-hydroxybutyrate and the ketogenic diet on NK cell effector functions against murine breast cancer and lymphoma cells were examined. This study demonstrated that NK cell viability, maturity, activation, IFN-γ release, and tumor-killing were significantly greater under ketogenic diet-induced ketosis, with similar but weaker patterns observed after in vitro beta-hydroxybutyrate supplementation. This suggests that there may be compounds other than ketone bodies that change in abundance during ketosis that enhance NK cell anticancer phenotype. The intricacy of NK cell-cancer interactions hold significant implications in the development of dietary adjuvants for NK cell therapies against cancer progression and metastasis. |
URI: | http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp017s75dg71b |
Type of Material: | Princeton University Senior Theses |
Language: | en |
Appears in Collections: | Molecular Biology, 1954-2024 Global Health and Health Policy Program, 2017-2023 |
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