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Fatty acid diet and prostate cancer: a treasure hunt or a wild goose chase?

Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases volume 28, pages 734–736 (2025)Cite this article

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While there are several factors that contribute to cancer development, mounting evidence suggests that dietary lipids may play an important role. The idea that what we eat could impact cancer risk has gained attention in recent years, and the lipid-diet-cancer connection has emerged as a promising research field. In fact, there has been an increasing widespread acceptance of the role played by lipid metabolism in tumor growth, despite its long-standing underestimation. Cancer cells have the ability to acquire, synthesize, and accumulate fatty acids in the form of lipid droplets [1]. These fatty acids are known to contribute significantly to cancer cell survival in the acidic and hypoxic tumor microenvironment, and they also promote cell proliferation and invasiveness [1].

Prostate cancer (PCa) is not an exception, and should not be overlooked. In the contemporary urologic oncology research, there is an increased focus on gaining a thorough understanding of the changes in lipid metabolism in PCa, the regulatory mechanisms responsible for these alterations, and their significance in both development and progression of the disease, and this in order to develop potential therapeutic strategies [2,3,4].

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Fig. 1: Map of estimated age-standardized PCa incidence rates in the world with the superimposition of countries known as major producers of pomegranate.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urology, Hôpital Universitaire de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Georges Mjaess & Thierry Roumeguère

  2. Laboratory of Experimental Medicine (ULB 222 Unit), CHU de Charleroi, Hôpital André Vésale, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Montigny-le-Tilleul, Belgium

    Thierry Roumeguère & Karim Zouaoui Boudjeltia

  3. Department of Geriatric Medicine, CHU de Charleroi, Hôpital André Vésale, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), 6110, Montigny-le-Tilleul, Belgium

    Kéziah Korpak

  4. Department-Unit of Pharmacognosy, Bioanalysis and Drug Discovery, Faculty of Pharmacy, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Pierre Van Antwerpen

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Contributions

Conceptualization: GM, TR, KK, KZ. Writing – first draft: GM. Writing – review and editing: GM, TR, KK, PVA, KZ. Supervision: TR, KZ.

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Correspondence to Georges Mjaess.

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Mjaess, G., Roumeguère, T., Korpak, K. et al. Fatty acid diet and prostate cancer: a treasure hunt or a wild goose chase?. Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis 28, 734–736 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41391-024-00854-8

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