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Publishing in the journal Nature Metabolism online Nov. 26, study results showed that the low-glucose environment inhabited by cancer cells, or tumor microenvironment, stalls cancer cell consumption of existing uridine nucleotide stores, making the chemotherapies less effective.

Normally, uridine nucleotides would be made and consumed to help make the genetic letter codes and fuel cell metabolism.

But when DNA and RNA construction is blocked by these chemotherapies, so too is the consumption of uridine nucleotide pools, the researchers found, as glucose is needed to change one form of uridine, UTP, into another usable form, UDP-glucose.

The irony, researchers say, is that a low-glucose tumor microenvironment is in turn slowing down cellular consumption of uridine nucleotides and presumably slowing down rates of cell death.

Researchers say cancer cells need to run out of pyrimidine building blocks, including uridine nucleotides, before the cells will self-destruct.