Vitamin K protects against ferroptosis
Marcus Conrad’s group in Munich recently found that vitamin K can protect cells against the cell death process known as ferroptosis, which is a type of cell death discovered by my lab and first reported in 2012 (although in retrospect, observations of what we now call ferroptosis can be seen going back to the 1970s):
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/StockwellLab/index/publications/Dixon_Cell_2012.pdf
I recently published a comprehensive review on the first 10 years of ferroptosis in Cell, which can be found here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867422007085
In their new study, the Conrad lab found that vitamin K and related compounds could block the lipid damage that drives ferroptosis. Vitamin K itself was first identified in the 1930s when Henrik Dam at the University of Copenhagen found that low fat diets fed to chicks caused a bleeding disorder because the diets were lacking a key factor they called vitamin K, for its role in “Koagulation”.
My group and other groups have increasing interest in the dietary factors that control ferroptosis and other metabolism-linked biology. This new work by the Conrad lab links vitamin K to ferroptosis, and the many disease processes already implicated in ferroptosis.
For more details, see my recent SpotLight article summarizing the new work on vitamin K.
