It has long been known that a moderate reduction in calorie intake decreases the onset and severity of age-related diseases, with remarkable results for cancer protection. In line with the work published by Yang et al., our lab focuses on studying diet-drug interactions as potent strategies to enhance treatment efficacy. In clinical practice, short-term periods of fasting and/or the use of fasting-mimicking diets seems to be feasible and safe interventions boosting the activity of anti-neoplasic treatments while also reducing chemotherapy-associated toxicity. These studies clearly expose diet-drug interactions as potent strategies to enhance treatment efficacy. 

We are becoming more and more convinced that precision nutrition needs to be integrated into clinical practice to enhance the effectiveness of treatments for chronic diseases and cancer. The study by Yang et al. provides a clear example of this approach, where they combined a specific low-carbohydrate diet with a drug inhibitor already in clinical use. Interestingly, the nutritional intervention used forces pancreatic tumor cells to rely on a particular metabolic pathway for energy production and proliferation. This pathway is subsequently blocked by the addition of the drug inhibitor, thus leading to favorable results that could not be achieved with either intervention alone.