How changing what you eat can fight cancer: focusing on dietary methionine restriction and/or MAT2A inhibition for the treatment of lymphoma

Cancer cells rewire their metabolism to support rapid growth. These changes can create weaknesses that new treatments can target. Our previous research showed that lymphoma cells—a form of blood cancer—depend on the nutrient serine to multiply. Blocking serine metabolism slows their growth, suggesting a promising therapeutic strategy.

We now aim to understand why serine is so important for these cancers. One key reason may be that serine helps generate “one-carbon units,” which are needed to recycle another nutrient, methionine. Methionine supplies methyl groups—small chemical tags added to DNA and proteins that help control which genes are turned on or off. Many lymphomas carry mutations in genes involved in these methylation processes. This means they may need a steady supply of methyl groups to maintain the abnormal patterns of gene regulation that drive cancer growth.

Our hypothesis is that lymphoma cells rely on methionine to fuel these abnormal methylation patterns, meaning that dietary methionine restriction could be a new treatment for lymphoma.

Our aims are to:

1. Understand how methionine metabolism shapes the epigenetic landscape (gene-regulating chemical marks) of lymphoma.
2. Determine how this metabolic pathway interacts with specific genetic mutations found in lymphoma.
3. Identify whether dietary methionine restriction can treat lymphoma alone/in combination with existing metabolic and epigenetic treatments.