A dietary pan-amino acid dropout screen in vivo reveals a critical role for histidine in T-ALL

Dietary interventions show therapeutic potential in cancer, but systematic comparisons are lacking. We performed a dietary pan-amino acid dropout screen in an orthotopic model of NOTCH1-driven T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia and identified histidine depletion as uniquely antileukemic. Histidine-restricted diets extended survival of leukemic mice in a dose-dependent manner, while remaining well-tolerated. Mechanistically, multiomic profiling revealed that histidine deprivation-induced ribosome stalling activates GCN2 to suppress cholesterol biosynthesis pathways critical for leukemic proliferation. Dietary cholesterol supplementation partially reverted the antileukemic effects of histidine restriction in vivo. These findings couple histidine levels and translational control to cholesterol metabolism, which can be therapeutically exploited for cancer treatment. Our results suggest that defined dietary amino acid restrictions may expose broader therapeutic opportunities in diseases beyond cancer.