Common Energy Drink Ingredient Taurine May Fuel Leukemia Progression

Credit: Adobe Stock/BrunoWeltmann

If you’ve ever looked at the label of an energy drink, protein powder or preworkout supplement, chances are you’ve seen taurine listed as one of the ingredients. This naturally occurring molecule is often marketed for energy, focus and athletic performance. Anecdotally, some people with cancer have even taken taurine as a supplement, hoping it might support their strength or immunity.

But in a surprising twist, new research published in Nature suggests that blocking taurine — not adding more — could actually help slow the progression of aggressive blood cancers like acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

What the Study Found

A team of investigators looked at how leukemia stem cells — cells that keep the cancer growing and coming back — interact with their surroundings in the bone marrow. They used a high-tech method called single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to study how the environment around leukemia cells changes as the disease gets worse. This environment — called the tumor microenvironment (TME) — includes many noncancerous cells that still play a big role in helping cancer grow.

They discovered that osteolineage cells, the cells that help form bone, make taurine and send it to leukemia cells. This connection strengthens as the disease progresses.

Leukemia cells take up the taurine using a protein called the taurine-taurine transporter (TAUT), and this turns out to be a major lifeline for them. Blocking this taurine “fuel line” in mouse models and patient-derived AML cells slowed the cancer down and improved survival.

When investigators combined TAUT inhibition with the drug venetoclax (a targeted therapy used in AML), the two worked better together than either one alone.

“We are very excited about these studies because they demonstrate that targeting uptake by myeloid leukemia cells may be a possible new avenue for treatment of these aggressive diseases,” said lead investigator Jeevisha Bajaj, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Genetics and member of Wilmot Cancer Institute’s Cancer Microenvironment research program.

Why Does This Matter?

While taurine is widely available and generally safe in healthy people, this study shows that taurine may feed cancer cells in certain contexts — specifically in leukemia, where it interacts with cancer stem cells. This doesn’t mean taurine causes cancer, but it does suggest that some cancer cells become dependent on it to grow, and cutting off that supply may be a promising new treatment strategy.

Researchers say the taurine-TAUT pathway plays a role in activating other signals that help leukemia cells grow and use energy. By blocking it, they were able to weaken the cancer’s internal engine. This work shows how cancer cells can depend on “support signals” from nearby healthy tissue — and how cutting off that support could lead to better treatments.

While researchers have studied the immune system’s part in this environment before, it’s been harder to study nonimmune support cells, like bone cells or blood vessel cells. This new study successfully tracked how those types of cells behave during leukemia progression.

“Since taurine is a common ingredient in energy drinks and is often provided as a supplement to mitigate the side effects of chemotherapy, our work suggests that it may be of interest to carefully consider the benefits of supplemental taurine in leukemia patients,” investigators concluded.