Arginine... Promising Resistance to Cancer and Viruses

Researchers at the U.S. Rockefeller University have revealed that a deficiency in arginine—an amino acid the body obtains from food and produces on its own—can disrupt the cellular mechanism responsible for producing MHC-I proteins, which serve as an early warning system that exposes cancerous or virus-infected cells to T cells of the immune system.

According to the study published in the journal Cell, increasing the amount of the amino acid arginine in the diet of laboratory mice restored these proteins to normal levels, reduced the growth of colon tumors, and improved the mice’s response to influenza infection and the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The study’s lead researcher, Qiaochuan Wu, noted that arginine deficiency specifically emerged as the most prominent dietary disruption pattern in the colon cancer and viral disease models they studied.

Researcher Suhel Tawazoi, director of the laboratory that conducted the study, suggested that these findings could pave the way for the use of arginine supplements—cheap and widely available substances—as an adjuvant therapy alongside cancer immunotherapy or antiviral drugs.

The research team emphasized that experiments have so far been conducted only on laboratory cells and mice, and that clinical trials on humans are required to confirm any potential therapeutic benefits before any actual medical application.