Influence of nutrition on anti-tumor activity

Nutritionally supporting the malnourished tumor bearing host may not benefit the disease outcome, but, rather, may preferentially "feed the cancer". We hypothesized that repletion is beneficial only when it augments an anti-tumor immune response. To support this hypothesis, 240 A/J mice were assigned to isocaloric dietary groups (24%, 5%, or 2.5% protein). On day 14 the mice received either immunogenic C1300- neuroblastoma (NB) or non-immunizing TBJ-NB. On day 21 half of the restricted animals were repleted with 24% protein chow. At day 35, chromium-release cell-mediated cytotoxicity was measured. In the group of mice that received 2.5% protein chow, nutritional repletion specifically augmented anti-tumor activity for C1300-NB which elicits a host immune response (33.78 L.U. (repleted) vs 3.47 L.U. (depleted) p less than 0.01), in contrast, nutritional repletion was detrimental for non-immunizing TBJ-NB, where further depression of cytotoxicity was seen (1.37 L.U. (repleted) vs 2.06 L.U. (depleted) 0 less than 0.01). This suggests that the influence of nutritional repletion in tumor nearing animals is dependent on the integrity of host's anti-tumor immunity.