For many years, the name creatine has been associated with the world of sports and bodybuilding gyms, as it is one of the most famous nutritional supplements used by athletes to increase strength and energy and improve performance during exercise.
But a recent preliminary study opened a completely different angle to look at this compound, after indicating that it may have a role in supporting some immune system cells responsible for fighting tumors.
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The study, conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles and published by iScience magazine last April, does not mean that creatine has become a cure for cancer, nor does it provide a medical recommendation for patients to use it, but it poses a promising scientific hypothesis: Can a well-known nutritional supplement help the immune system better perform its role in confronting cancer cells?
What is creatine?
Creatine is a natural compound consisting of three amino acids, and is found primarily in muscles and the brain. A person obtains a portion of it by eating red meat and seafood, while the body produces about one gram per day in the liver, pancreas, and kidneys.
The body stores creatine in the muscles in the form of creatine phosphate, a form that helps provide rapid energy to the cells, especially during intense physical effort. For this reason, it is widely used among athletes and bodybuilders as a supplement that helps improve performance and increase muscle mass when taken within the recommended doses.
But the new interest in creatine did not come from its ability to support muscles, but rather from its potential effect on immune cells that play an important role in fighting cancer.
Creatine and immune cell support
The recent study focused on two primary types of immune cells: dendritic cells and killer T cells.
Dendritic cells function as an alarm system within immunity; They pick up signals associated with cancer cells and present them to T cells, helping them recognize and attack the tumor. As for killer T cells, they are one of the most important weapons that the body uses against abnormal cells.
According to the results of experiments conducted on mouse models and human cells, creatine appeared to enhance the activity of dendritic cells, which may help them better activate T cells against tumors.
This point is particularly important because many modern cancer immunotherapies rely on stimulating T cells, but they do not work for all patients. The study suggests that supporting dendritic cells, which train and direct T cells, may be an additional way to improve the immune response.
The secret is in the creatine carrier
The idea began when researchers examined the metabolic genes that were most active within dendritic cells that infiltrated tumors in mice. They found that the gene responsible for transporting creatine into cells was more active within dendritic cells found in the tumor compared to those found in healthy tissues.
To understand the importance of this, the researchers designed genetically modified dendritic cells that lacked the creatine transporter. The result was that these cells lost part of their ability to activate, and they also became weaker in stimulating T cells to attack the tumor.
When dendritic cells that could not introduce creatine were cultured with T cells in the laboratory, the T cells divided less frequently and produced fewer immune signals needed to fight cancer. This reinforced the hypothesis that creatine may be an important part of the energy system that these cells need to function efficiently.
What happens when you increase creatine?
The researchers then conducted the opposite experiment: instead of reducing creatine levels, they tried raising them to see if that would improve the performance of immune cells.
Experiments on mice with skin cancer showed that giving creatine daily significantly slowed tumor growth and increased the number of active dendritic cells within the tumor. These cells have also become more capable of secreting chemical signals that attract more killer T cells to the tumor area.
The researchers explain this by saying that creatine may help dendritic cells maintain stable levels of energy within the tumor environment, which is a highly competitive environment for food and energy due to the rapid growth of cancer cells.
Creatine, according to what the study suggests, may raise the levels of ATP within dendritic cells, which is the main source of energy that cells rely on to operate their vital functions. Thus, these cells can remain more capable of activation and sending the necessary immune signals.
Preliminary results on human cells
The study was not limited to mice only, as researchers also tested the effect of creatine on human dendritic cells in the laboratory. The results showed that creatine enhanced the activation of these cells and improved their ability to stimulate human T cells against a cancer-related target.
These results do not mean that the same effect will necessarily occur within the human body, but they give researchers an additional reason to study creatine within immunotherapy strategies, especially in the field of dendritic cell-based vaccines, which are vaccines designed to stimulate the immune system to recognize and attack the tumor.
Researchers believe that creatine may be used in the future in two possible ways: either as a supportive supplement for patients receiving immunotherapy, or as a tool to improve the quality of dendritic cell-based immune vaccines before giving them to patients. But all of this is still within the scope of research, and has not yet turned into a treatment recommendation.
Hope and caution
Although the results seem interesting, the researchers stress that the study is still at an early stage, and that it was conducted on cells and animal models, not on cancer patients. Therefore, it should not be treated as evidence that taking creatine prevents or treats cancer.
Creatine has also been used for decades as a nutritional supplement, and is generally considered safe when taken in recommended doses in healthy people, but cancer patients in particular should not add any nutritional supplement to their regimen without consulting a doctor, because supplements may interfere with some treatments or affect health status in ways that differ from one patient to another.
The crucial step remains clinical trials in humans, to find out whether taking creatine can actually improve the results of immunotherapy in patients, at what doses, under what conditions, and with what types of cancer.
To date, creatine remains a well-known supplement in the sports world, but it has also become the subject of new interest in immunology and cancer laboratories. Between the scientific promise and medical caution, the most important message remains clear: the results are promising, but they are still the beginning of a long road that needs to be proven.
