Apr. 1, 2021 , 10:10 AM
When New York City medical oncologist Vicky Makker meets a patient with endometrial cancer that has spread or recurred, she knows the outlook isn’t good. Even after radiation and drug treatments, most women with advanced disease die within 5 years.
But this spring, Makker is helping launch two clinical trials she hopes will change the picture. The drug patients will receive, called a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor, has already failed in multiple cancer trials. But the new studies are taking an unconventional tack to resurrect the drug: putting patients on a ketogenic diet, a low-carbohydrate regimen that typically involves loads of meat, cheese, eggs, and vegetables. The researchers hope the diet will render tumors more vulnerable to the drug, which blocks a growth-promoting pathway in cells. “It’s very outside of the mainstream thinking,” says Makker, a researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.