Arginine Depletion in Combination with Canavanine Supplementation Induces Massive Cell Death in Myeloma Cells By Interfering with Their Protein Metabolism and Bypassing Potential Rescue Mechanisms

Abstract Introduction Although the therapeutic armamentarium against multiple myeloma has tremendously increased in recent years, it still remains an incurable disease. A highly promising novel anti-tumoral treatment strategy is to target specific non-redundant metabolic achilles heels of individual cancer entities. The semi-essential amino acid arginine can be synthesized from citrulline in most physiological tissues due to expression of the rate-limiting enzyme argininosuccinate synthetase 1 (ASS1). Various tumor entities do not express ASS1, therefore depend on the exogenous availability of arginine and pharmacological approaches to systemically deplete arginine are in phase I-III clinic…