Glutamine antagonist with diet deficient in glutamine and aspartate reduce tumor growth.

This study was designed to investigate whether a combination of a glutamine antagonist (DON) and a diet deficient in glutamate and aspartate (AG) altered glutamine metabolism in tumor tissue, and inhibited tumor growth. In experiment-1, 21 male Donryu rats were fed with AG and implanted with Yoshida's Sarcoma. Of them, 7 rats were sacrificed on the 5th day (group AG), other 7 were sacrificed next day (group AG-1) and the remaining 7 were injected with DON on the 5th day and sacrificed next day (group AG+D). The tumor weight of group AG+D was significantly lower than of group AG, or of group AG-1. In experiment-2, of 23 rats, 9 were fed with control diet and 14 were fed with AG and implanted. 12 were sacrificed on the 5th day (group C, AG), and 11 were injected with DON on the 5th day and sacrificed next day (group C+D, AG+D). The reduced ratio of tumor weight in group C+D and group AG+D were 25% and 67%, respectively. These results show that the tumor growth could be inhibited by using metabolic antagonist of glutamine, and that it had synergistic effect in conjunction with the imbalanced diet.