Jihye Yun, Edouard Mullarky, Changyuan Lu, Kaitlyn N Bosch, Adam Kavalier, Keith Rivera, Jatin Roper, Iok In Christine Chio, Eugenia G Giannopoulou, Carlo Rago, Ashlesha Muley, John M Asara, Jihye Paik, Olivier Elemento, Zhengming Chen, Darryl J Pappin, Lukas E Dow, Nickolas Papadopoulos, Steven S Gross, Lewis C Cantley
More than half of human colorectal cancers (CRCs) carry either KRAS or BRAF mutations and are often refractory to approved targeted therapies. We found that cultured human CRC cells harboring KRAS or BRAF mutations are selectively killed when exposed to high levels of vitamin C. This effect is due to increased uptake of the oxidized form of vitamin C, dehydroascorbate (DHA), via the GLUT1 glucose transporter. Increased DHA uptake causes oxidative stress as intracellular DHA is reduced to vitamin C, depleting glutathione...
December 11, 2015: Science