Great questions! Cancer is a very serious health concern that affects many people. Like you said, cancer cells are our very own cells that have turned against us. A cancer cell is created when a normal cell is damaged. The damage that occurs happens to the cell's DNA, which is the material that directs ALL processes in the cell. If DNA is damaged, then the cell can not function normally. When a cell is damaged in a way that allows for it to grow uncontrollably without dying, then it becomes a cancer cell. This cell just continues to divide and make new cells, ones that the body does not need, because there are no signals that tell the cell to stop growing. All cells require amino acids to make proteins. Dividing cells require a lot more amino acids in order to make an entirely new cell. So yes, cancer cells are using the amino acids already in your body in order to grow and divide. It is true that if we took away the amino acids available, the cancer cells could no longer divide and hurt us. Unfortunately ALL cells in our body need amino acids to function, so if we took away amino acids from our body then the rest of our cells would die along with the cancer. Therefore we can not remove amino acids in order to stop cancer, because the rest of our body needs them.

There are currently many forms of treatment for different types of cancers. I have included a link below from the American Cancer Society that includes a list of many cancer treatments used today. Because cancer cells are our body's own cells that have turned bad, it is very difficult to find drugs or therapies that target cancer cells without hurting our own good cells in the process. Many scientists are trying to solve this problem, and they have made more progress on certain types of cancer cells than others.