Sending ammonia signals

Ammonia has long been viewed as a toxic cellular by-product of glutamine metabolism that has little or no functionality. New findings by a group at Pfizer Inc. now suggest this may not always be the case. The team found that in tumors, ammonia functions as a diffusible signal that can trigger autophagy in neighboring cancer cells, which enables them to be better prepared to counter external stressors such as chemotherapeutics.¹

The results suggest that disrupting glutamine metabolism to reduce ammonia could be explored as a therapeutic strategy. The challenge will be figuring out how to therapeutically target the underlying pathways...