Meta-Tyrosine is claimed to be toxic in that it accumulates in cells and may cause insulin resistance, but recently it was discovered that it might also be a tumor resistance factor. Perhaps patients with cancer should be taking meta-tyrosine, even at the risk of slight toxicity? It seems only tiny amounts are required for a theraputic effect in animals models...
"Concomitant tumor resistance (CR) is a phenomenon in which a tumor-bearing host is resistant to
the growth of secondary tumor implants and metastasis. While former studies have indicated that
T-cell dependent processes mediate CR in hosts bearing immunogenic small tumors, the most universal manifestation
of CR induced by immunogenic and non-immunogenic large tumors had been associated with an antitumor
serum factor that remained an enigma for many years. In a recent paper, we identified that elusive factor(s) as
an equi-molar mixture of meta-tyrosine and ortho-tyrosine, two isomers of tyrosine that are not present in normal
proteins and that proved to be responsible for 90% and 10%, respectively, of the total serum anti-tumor activity.
In this work, we have extended our previous findings demonstrating that a periodic intravenous administration
of meta-tyrosine induced a dramatic reduction of lung and hepatic metastases generated in mice bearing two
different metastatic murine tumors and decreased the rate of death from 100% up to 25% in tumor-excised mice
that already exhibited established metastases at the time of surgery. These anti-metastatic effects were achieved
even at very low concentrations and without displaying any detectable toxic-side effects, suggesting that the use
of meta-tyrosine may help to develop new and less harmful means of managing malignant diseases, especially
those aimed to control the growth of metastases that is the most serious problem in cancer pathology.
The paper can be accessed here: http://www.medicinab...ID/25637892.pdf