Surprising Foods Contain Nutrient That Improves Immune Response to Cancer

Artist’s impression of white blood cells attacking a tumor to illustrate immunotherapy.

When it comes to cancer, red meat is often thought to be the bad guy. But new research from the University of Chicago has shown that a nutrient found in red meat and dairy products may support our body’s ability to infiltrate and fight off cancer cells.

The nutrient in question is called trans-vaccenic acid. TVA is a long-chain fatty acid that our bodies cannot make by themselves.

“Circulating TVA in humans is mainly from ruminant-derived foods, including beef, lamb and dairy products such as milk and butter,” study author Jing Chen, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, told Newsweek.

TVA is just one of roughly 700 known food-sourced metabolites that circulate in our blood. In the new study, published in the journal Nature, Chen’s team collected these compounds into a database and tested whether any of the molecules could affect the immune system’s ability to fight cancer cells.

Specifically, the team focused on their ability to activate a class of white blood cells called CD8+ T cells, also known as killer T cells. These cells are the body’s trained fighting squad, finding and destroying infected cells and, in this case, tumors.

After evaluating the top six candidates in both human and mouse cells, the team found that TVA produced the best results. “TVA enhances CD8+ T cell function and thus promotes T cell–based immune system response to battle tumor growth,” Chen said.

The team then assessed how TVA might support immune function against diverse tumor types in both isolated cells and mouse models. They found that mice with a diet enriched with TVA saw significantly reduced tumor growth potential for both melanomas and colon cancer cells. Their T cells also appeared to be more effective at infiltrating the tumors.

Finally, the team analyzed blood samples taken from patients undergoing immunotherapy treatments for lymphoma. The researchers found that patients with higher levels of TVA in their blood tended to respond better to the immunotherapy treatment than those with lower TVA levels.

However, Chen pointed out that these results do not indicate that we should be stuffing ourselves with hamburgers and cheese. Rather, it highlights how these food-derived molecules could promote anti-cancer activity.

“Focusing on bioactivity of nutrients rather than individual food might be more important, and taking supplements with enriched bioactive nutrients is likely more efficient than consuming foods containing these nutrients,” Chen said.

Plant-based nutrients may also prove promising in the fight against cancer.

“There is early data showing that other fatty acids from plants signal through a similar receptor [as TVA], so we believe there is a high possibility that nutrients from plants can do the same thing,” Chen said.

He continued: “There might be ‘nutrients’ from plant-based food that do similar things like TVA, we just don’t know yet. A comprehensive understanding of diverse physiological and pathological functions of each nutrient from different foods is still not available. This warrants future more comprehensive studies to elucidate these functions of nutrients.”

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