Sugary drinks may speed bowel cancer spread

Sugary drinks are known to increase the risk of bowel cancer – Australia’s second deadliest cancer – but a major new international study has found they may also increase the speed at which the disease aggressively spreads throughout the body.

The study, led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre and published in Nature Metabolism, looked at the impact of diet on late-stage bowel cancer.

What we eat and drink is already recognised as one of the most significant factors contributing to the development of bowel cancer, with the global rise in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) gaining increasing attention from scientists.

In the US alone, over half of adults and nearly two-thirds of youth consume SSBs daily and this surge in consumption parallels alarming increases in early-onset cancer rates and related deaths.

SSBs are any liquids sweetened with added sugars, such as soft drinks, fruit juices and other sweetened beverages, which include sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, both of which contain glucose and fructose in an approximate 1:1 ratio.

The study shows that this glucose-fructose mix directly fuels cancer cell migration and metastasis in preclinical models of advanced bowel cancer.

Metastasis is the process by which cancer spreads to other organs.

The researchers compared the effects of the glucose-fructose mix found in most sugary drinks with those of glucose or fructose alone.

Only the sugar mix made cancer cells more mobile, leading to faster spread to the liver – the most common site of bowel cancer metastasis.

The sugar mix activated an enzyme called sorbitol dehydrogenase (SORD), which boosts glucose metabolism and triggers the cholesterol pathway, ultimately driving metastasis.

This is the same pathway targeted by statins, common heart drugs that inhibit cholesterol production.

Blocking SORD slowed metastasis, even with the sugar mix present.

These findings suggest that targeting SORD could also offer an opportunity to block metastasis.

These latest findings, led by Dr Jihye Yun, Assistant Professor of Genetics at MD Anderson, build on a previous study of hers, which showed that even moderate intake of sugary drinks directly fueled tumour growth in early-stage bowel cancer.

“Our findings highlight that daily diet matters not only for cancer risk but also for how the disease progresses once it has developed,” says Yun.

“While these findings need further investigation, they suggest that reducing sugary drinks, targeting SORD or repurposing statins may benefit patients with colorectal (bowel) cancer.”