Cancer Therapy by Nutritional Restrictions: Current Knowledge and Future Guidelines

Cancer therapy has been a major scientific and medical focus for decades, treatment of which has proven to be a challenging task, especially in the light of its escalating incidence all over the globe. The material and moral costs of understanding the nature of the disease and finding successful ways of treatment have been extremely high. One major experimental addition to the methods of dealing with the various types of cancer has been the use of starvation protocols that may halt or delay the progression of malignant cells. In this review, a comprehensive and a pioneering account of the literature on starvation therapy is being demonstrated with an emphasis on the experimental and clinical evidence that exist, in addition to the molecular mechanisms and cellular alterations that accompany the starvation. The major objectives were to open ways for further research into understanding the topic and developing suitable and effective methods based on nutritional manipulations, for combating malignancies. The starvation includes precursors of growth such as energy precursors and others such as amino acids, nucleic acids, in addition to environmental manipulations such as abnormal oxygenation. Additional emphasis has highlighted the synergistic effects of combining conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy with various modes of the artificial starvation. Methods of manipulating nutritional precursors have also been compiled. Additionally, negative effects of starvation were also briefly explained in an attempt to comprehend future guidelines for antagonizing such negative effects.