#warburg effect

[optimisticgalaxydreamland]

The Warburg effect explained | L'effect Warburg expliqué | El effect Warburg explicado | O efeito Warburg explicado

[wikipathways]

Metabolic reprogramming in cervical cancer and metabolomics perspectives Boning Li and Long Sui, Nutr Metab (Lond). 2021; 18: 93.

[currentsinbiology]

Cancer cells eat their neighbors' 'words'

Cancer cells are well-known as voracious energy consumers, but even veteran cancer-metabolism researcher Deepak Nagrath was surprised by their latest exploit: Experiments in his lab at Rice University show that some cancer cells get 30-60 percent of their fuel from eating their neighbors' "words."

"Our original hypothesis was that cancer cells were modifying their metabolism based on communications they were receiving from cells in the microenvironment near the tumor," said Nagrath, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice and co-author of a new study describing the research in the open-access journal eLife. "None of us expected to find that they were converting the signals directly into energy."

The Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the "Warburg effect" led scientists to believe, for decades, that all cancers were dependent on glycolysis. Nagrath's lab and others have shown in recent years that the truth is far more complex: Each type of cancer has a unique metabolic profile.

The exosome study began four years ago based upon a growing realization that exosomes might play a role in regulating cancer metabolism.

The DOI of the eLife paper is: 10.7554/eLife.10250

A copy of the paper is available at: http://elifesciences.org/content/5/e10250v1

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[myserendipities]

Cancer cells are notorious for their ability to divide uncontrollably and generate hordes of new tumor cells. Most of the fuel consumed by these rapidly proliferating cells is glucose, a type of sugar. Scientists had believed that most of the cell mass that makes up new cells, including cancer cells, comes from that glucose. However, MIT biologists have now found, to their surprise, that the largest source for new cell material is amino acids, which cells consume in much smaller quantities. The findings offer a new way to look at cancer cell metabolism, a field of research that scientists hope will yield new drugs that cut off cancer cells' ability to grow and divide. Since the 1920s, scientists have known that cancer cells generate energy differently than normal cells, a phenomenon dubbed the "Warburg effect" after its discoverer, German biochemist Otto Warburg. Human cells normally use glucose as an energy source, breaking it down through a series of complex chemical reactions that requires oxygen. Warburg discovered that tumor cells switch to a less efficient metabolic strategy known as fermentation, which does not require oxygen and produces much less energy. More recently, scientists have theorized that cancer cells use this alternative pathway to create building blocks for new cells. However, one strike against this hypothesis is that much of the glucose is converted into lactate, a waste product that is not useful to cells. Furthermore, there has been very little research on exactly what goes into the composition of new cancer cells or any kind of rapidly dividing mammalian cells. "Because mammals eat such a diversity of foods, it seemed like an unanswered question about which foods contribute to what parts of mass," Vander Heiden says. Although cells consume glucose and the amino acid glutamine at very high rates, the researchers found that those two molecules contribute little to the mass of new cells—glucose accounts for 10 to 15 percent of the carbon found in the cells, while glutamine contributes about 10 percent of the carbon. Instead, the largest contributors to cell mass were amino acids, which make up proteins. As a group, amino acids (excluding glutamine) contribute the majority of the carbon atoms found in new cells and 20 to 40 percent of the total mass. Although initially surprising, the findings make sense, Vander Heiden says, because cells are made mostly of protein. "There's some economy in utilizing the simpler, more direct route to build what you're made out of," he says. "If you want to build a house out of bricks, it's easier if you have a pile of bricks around and use those bricks than to start with mud and make new bricks." It remains something of a mystery why proliferating human cells consume so much glucose. Consistent with previous studies, the researchers found that most of the glucose burned by these cells is excreted as lactate. "This led us to conclude that the importance of high glucose consumption is not necessarily the manipulation of carbon that allows you to make cell mass, but more for the other products that it provides, such as energy," Hosios says.

Scientists surprised to find that amino acids, not sugar, supply most building blocks for tumor cells

[larryhbernsteinme]

Metastatic Disease (4.3)

Metastatic Disease (4.3)

Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Writer and Curator

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2015/05/01/lhbern/metastatic_disease

Metastatic Disease

In the preceding discussions the hematological and nonhematological cancers were elaborated.  These were tumors of blood or solid tumors that are malignant.  Malignant solid tumors have a loss of normal architecture.  Malignant…

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[scirp]

Read the full paper at: http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=49569 DOI: 10.4236/ojim.2014.43011 Author(s) Kevin J. Carlin Affiliation(s) Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, Temple, TX, USA. ABSTRACT How can cancer develop in so many different organs in so many different ways, but the outcome is similar enough to all be under the same title—cancer? There are so many causes of cancer—viruses, genetic defects, sunburn, gastroesophageal reflux, smoking, alcohol, radiation, chemicals, etc. The above variable well known etiologies of cancer could all induce a need for repair which involves alkalinizing the cells involved. Thus the commonality for cancers could be a pH change. If true, this could give the field of cancer prevention and therapy new avenues of pursuit. KEYWORDS Cancer, Warburg Effect, pH, Cellular Pumps, Channels, Transporters, Isoenzymes