- Scientists at UChicago discovered that trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), a fatty acid found in beef, lamb, and dairy products, improves the ability of immune cells to fight tumors.
- November 22, 2023
- Research by Jing Chen, Chuan He, and the team suggests that TVA could have the potential as a nutritional supplement to complement clinical treatments for cancer. (NIH)
- By Matt Wood
- Assistant Director of Communications, Biological Sciences Division
- Trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), a long-chain fatty acid found in meat and dairy products from grazing animals such as cows and sheep, improves the ability of CD8+ T cells to infiltrate tumors and kill cancer cells, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Chicago.
- The research, published this week in Nature, also shows that patients with higher levels of TVA circulating in the blood responded better to immunotherapy, suggesting that it could have potential as a nutritional supplement to complement clinical treatments for cancer.
- “There are many studies trying to decipher the link between diet and human health, and it’s very difficult to understand the underlying mechanisms because of the wide variety of foods people eat. But if we focus on just the nutrients and metabolites derived from food, we begin to see how they influence physiology and pathology,” said Jing Chen, Ph.D., the Janet Davison Rowley Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine at UChicago and one of the senior authors of the new study. “By focusing on nutrients that can activate T cell responses, we found one that actually enhances anti-tumor immunity by activating an important immune pathway.”
- Finding nutrients that activate immune cells
- Chen’s lab focuses on understanding how metabolites, nutrients, and other molecules circulating in the blood influence the development of cancer and response to cancer treatments. For the new study, two postdoctoral fellows, Hao Fan, Ph.D. and Siyuan Xia, PhD, both co-first authors, assembled a “blood nutrient” compound library consisting of 255 bioactive molecules derived from nutrients. They screened the compounds in this new library for their ability to influence anti-tumor immunity by activating CD8+ T cells, a group of immune cells critical for killing cancerous or virally infected cells.
- After the scientists evaluated the top six candidates in both human and mouse cells, they saw that TVA performed the best. TVA is the most abundant trans fatty acid present in human milk, but the body cannot produce it on its own. Only about 20% of TVA is broken down into other byproducts, leaving 80% circulating in the blood. “That means there must be something else it does, so we started working on it more,” Chen said.
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