Outsmarting cancer with folate: could the simple vitamin called folate become the most effective warrior in the battle against cancer?

Several years ago, a team of researchers at Purdue University discovered that cancer cells possess a voracious appetite for folate, gobbling up the B vitamin to support rapid cell division--a hallmark of malignant cancer cells. To satisfy this craving, cancer cells developed mechanisms, called folate receptors, to capture folate more effectively than normal cells.

Researchers are now exploiting cancer cells' craving for the water-soluble vitamin by harnessing folate as a therapeutic "Trojan Horse" to sneak cancer-fighting drugs directly into tumor cells. Proceeding unchallenged through the body's immune defense system, folate can attach itself to special folate receptors on the surface of cancer cells, enter the cell with an attached anticancer agent, then wreak havoc on the cancer cell once inside.

"It's using cancer's nutritional needs against itself," says Dr. Philip Low, distinguished professor of chemistry at Purdue, who led the research team that discovered this diagnostic treatment method. "We are essentially slipping medicine in with cancer's favorite food."

The discovery has yielded novel, but complementary anticancer therapies that involve attaching various markers or anticancer agents to folate. One therapy called folate-targeted immunotherapy involves marking or flagging cancer cells and triggering a response from the body's natural immune system.

"There's no better drug than your own immune system, which consequently is capable of getting rid of every last bacterium, every last virus, or every last fungus in the body. Today's drugs can't do that," says Dr. Christopher Leamon, a member of the Purdue research team and vice president of research at Endocyte, the company developing the new therapies. "Unfortunately, many cancers develop ways to evade immune surveillance. But we've found a way to redirect a patient's immune system to kill those resistant cancer cells by using our folate-target approach."

This method, in effect, forces the body's immune system to fight the disease by marking cancer cells with a foreign agent that triggers an immune response. In chickenpox, for example, the "foreign" virus enters the body, immediately triggering the immune system that summons the body's immune fighting cells to mount an attack. If re-exposed to chickenpox, you won't get the disease because your body has already "seen" it and developed a memory…