Fig. 2
From: Drug-induced amino acid deprivation as strategy for cancer therapy
Concept of asparagine starvation in cancer treatment using L-asparaginase. During L-asparaginase treatment, L-asparagine in blood circulation will be broken down into L-aspartate. L-aspartate enters the cells through amino acid transporter. In normal cells, L-aspartate will be converted back into L-asparagine by L-asparagine synthetase (ASNS) for further use. However, some cancer cell types may have no or little ASNS expression and they cannot produce asparagine for further use. They will suffer from asparagine starvation and subsequently undergoing apoptosis