{
  "id": 7855408,
  "title": "Metabolic Targeting of SREBP1 Reprograms the Obesity-Driven Ascites Immune Microenvironment and Enhances Chemotherapy Response in Obesity-Associated Ovarian Cancer",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/16/metabolic-targeting-of-srebp1-reprograms-the-obesity-driven-ascites",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-09-16T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.14.751517v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Obesity negatively impacts the survival of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer (OC), suggesting a connection between obesity, metastasis, and treatment response. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In preclinical studies involving mice fed a high-fat diet (HFD) and ovarian cancer, the tumors grew significantly larger than those in mice on a low-fat diet (LFD), and the HFD mice were less responsive to standard-of-care (SOC) chemotherapy. Both the HFD-induced tumors and tumors from obese women showed heightened SREBP1 expression and nuclear localization, a protein that governs lipid production and transport. The researchers aimed to determine if inhibiting SREBP1 processing could improve the response to SOC chemotherapy in obesity-associated OC. They tested the FDA-approved drug Nelfinavir (NFV), which acts as a pharmacological inhibitor of site-2 protease, blocking SREBP1 processing, in combination with SOC (paclitaxel+carboplatin) in preclinical models of diet-induced obesity and OC. The results revealed a marked enhancement in therapeutic response, alterations in the tumor's fat cells, and a reprogramming of the immune environment surrounding the tumor in the ascites fluid, all of which are driven by NFV-mediated inhibition of SREBP1 processing. These findings propose a model wherein NFV's action disrupts metabolic pathways associated with immune evasion and treatment resistance, thus boosting the efficacy of SOC chemotherapy in obesity-linked OC. Overall, these results underscore the potential of metabolic targeting as a therapeutic strategy to improve outcomes in obesity-associated ovarian cancer.",
  "summary": "Obesity has an adverse effect on survival of women with ovarian cancer (OC), supporting a link between obesity, metastatic progression, and therapeutic response, but comprehensive mechanistic insight is lacking. In pre-clinical models of diet-induced obesity and OC, mice fed a high fat diet (HFD) exhibit substantially increased tumor burden relative to low fat diet (LFD) mice and respond poorly…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}