A popular dietary supplement causes the risk of cancer and brain metastases

Abstract: The commercial dietary supplement nicotinamide riboside, which is advertised to improve cardiovascular and neurological health, may actually increase the risk of developing breast cancer that metastasizes to the brain.

Source: University of Missouri

While previous studies have linked commercial dietary supplements such as nicotinamide riboside (NR), a form of vitamin B3, to benefits related to cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological health, new research from the University of Missouri has shown that NR may actually increase the risk of serious diseases, including cancer development.

An international team of researchers led by Elena Goun, associate professor of chemistry at MU, found that high levels of NR can not only increase a person’s risk of developing triple-negative breast cancer, but can also cause the cancer to metastasize, or spread to the brain. .

Once the cancer reaches the brain, the results are fatal because there are currently no viable treatment options, said Goun, who is an author of the study.

“Some people take them [vitamins and supplements] because they automatically assume that vitamins and supplements have only positive health benefits, but very little is known about how they actually work,” said Goun. “Because of this lack of knowledge, we were inspired to study basic questions about how vitamins and dietary supplements work in the body.”

After the death of her 59-year-old father just three months after she was diagnosed with colon cancer, Goun was motivated by her father’s death to pursue a better scientific understanding of cancer metabolism, or the energy by which cancer spreads in the body.

Since NR is a known supplement that helps increase cellular energy levels, and cancer cells feed on that energy through their increased metabolism, Goun wanted to investigate the role of NR in cancer development and spread.

“Our work is particularly important given the wide commercial availability and large number of ongoing human clinical trials in which NR is used to alleviate the side effects of cancer therapy in patients,” said Goun.

The researchers used this technology to compare and examine how much NR is present in cancer cells, T cells and healthy tissues.

“Although NR is already widely used in humans and is being investigated in so many ongoing clinical trials for additional applications, much of how NR works is a black box — it’s not understood,” Goun said.

“This inspired us to come up with this new imaging technique based on ultrasensitive bioluminescence imaging that allows real-time quantification of NR levels in a non-invasive manner. The presence of NR is indicated by light, and the stronger the light, the more NR is present.”

Goun said the study’s findings underscore the importance of carefully researching the potential side effects of supplements like NR before using them in people who may have different types of health problems.

In the future, Goun would like to provide information that could potentially lead to the development of certain inhibitors that would help make anti-cancer therapies like chemotherapy more effective in treating cancer. The key to this approach, Goun said, is to look at it from the perspective of personalized medicine.

“Not all cancers are the same in every person, especially from a metabolic signature standpoint,” Goun said. “Cancers can often change their metabolism before or after chemotherapy.”

About this cancer research news

Author: Eric Stann
Source: University of Missouri
Contact: Eric Stann – University of Missouri
Picture: The image is in the public domain

Original research: Closed access.
“A bioluminescent probe for in vivo non-invasive monitoring of nicotinamide riboside uptake reveals a link between metastasis and NAD+ metabolismTamara Marić and Dr. Biosensors and bioelectronics

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Abstract

A bioluminescent probe for in vivo non-invasive monitoring of nicotinamide riboside uptake reveals a link between metastasis and NAD+ metabolism

Nicotinamide riboside (NR) is a form of vitamin B₃ and is one of the most studied compounds for restoring cellular NAD⁺ levels that show clinical potential in many metabolic and age-related disorders.

Despite its wide commercial availability as a potent nutraceutical, our understanding of NR uptake by various cells and tissues is greatly limited by the lack of noninvasive in vivo imaging tools that limit its clinical translation.

Here we report the development and validation of a bioluminescent NR uptake probe (BiNR) for noninvasive longitudinal imaging of NR uptake and in vitro and in vivo. In addition, we have optimized an assay that allows monitoring of NR flux without the need to transfect cells with the luciferase gene, enabling the use of the BiNR probe in clinical samples, as demonstrated with human T cells.

Finally, we used BiNR to investigate the role of NR uptake in cancer prevalence and metastasis formation in a triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) animal model.

Our results show that NR supplementation results in a significant increase in the prevalence of cancer and metastasis of TNBC in the brain.

These results highlight the important role of potent nutraceuticals such as NR in cancer metabolism and the need to personalize their use in specific patient populations.