cysteine – Cell Stress

Burning fat with cysteine depletion

Adams and colleagues comment on two complementary articles by Varghese et al and Lee et al showing that cysteine depletion through combined dietary and genetic means in mice evokes a unique stress response in the liver to amplify these metabolic outcomes and offer a potentially new treatment option for obesity.

MYCN upregulates the transsulfuration pathway to suppress the ferroptotic vulnerability in MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma

Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent, oxidative form of cell death that is countered mainly by glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4) and the production of glutathione (GSH), which is formed from cysteine. The identification of the cancers that may benefit from pharmacological ferroptotic induction is just emerging. We recently demonstrated that inducing ferroptosis genetically or pharmacologically in MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma (NB) is a novel and effective way to kill these cells. MYCN increases iron metabolism and subsequent hydroxyl radicals through increased expression of the transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1) and low levels of the ferroportin receptor. To counter increased hydroxyl radicals, MYCN binds to the promoter of SLC3A2 (solute carrier family 3 member 2). SLC3A2 is a subunit of system Xc-, which is (…)