Credit: Jeff Kremer
Unlike a healthy cell, a sarcoma cell (above) relies on environmental sources of arginine, an important protein building block. Remove environmental arginine and the cell must begin a process called autophagy, or "self-eating," to survive. A second hit to its survival pathways then kills the cell, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Areas of autophagy are shown in green and the cell nucleus in blue.