About 100 years ago, German physiologist Otto Warburg famously proposed the theory that cancer cells consume a lot of glucose and produce a lot of lactic acid compared to normal cells, which led to a lot of prescriptions like “starving cancer cells”.
This phenomenon was later called the Warburg effect and became the basis of many cancer theories, such as the imaging technology positron computed tomography (PET), which can use the sugar intake of cancer cells for imaging; for example, it is widely believed that the plundering of sugar resources by cancer cells squeezes the nutrient sources of immune cells, which in part causes the body to have no strength to fight against tumor cells. The body does not have the strength to fight against tumor cells.
HEHO Health reports that our understanding of tumor metabolism is about to be updated! They found that cancer cells actually take the blame for the defeat, and that it is the non-cancerous cells in the tumor microenvironment that actually consume large amounts of glucose, and that “glutamine” is the highest source of nutrition for cancer cells. The report was published in the journal Nature.
The study concluded that tumor cells are not responsible for the previously thought high glucose metabolism, but rather immune cells called macrophages, which have high glucose metabolism levels. The findings overturn the prevailing view of metabolic competition in the tumor microenvironment over the past century and could lead to the development of new anti-cancer therapies and new strategies for diagnostic and detection imaging of cancer.
Understanding cancer cells’ ‘dietary preferences’ helps track cancer cells
In this trial, researchers first used PET to quantify glucose uptake by different cell populations in the tumor microenvironment by probing glucose consumption in mouse models of colorectal, kidney and breast cancers. The results were surprising in that glucose was preferentially allocated to the infiltrating immune cells rather than to the cancer cells. The analysis revealed that cancer cells actually prefer glutamine and that uptake and metabolism of glutamine significantly inhibits glucose metabolism and tumor infiltration by immune cells.
Researcher Matthew Madden, PhD, said, “We think this is a general phenomenon that is widespread across cancer types.” Further research revealed that it was not nutrient deficiencies that led to differences in glucose and glutamine uptake, but rather specific cellular signaling pathways.
This contrasts with the prevailing view that there is metabolic competition between cancer cells and immune cells in the tumor microenvironment, Madden noted, “It has been assumed that it is the cancer cells that consume all the glucose and therefore cause the immune cells to not have access to enough glucose to function.” The data suggest that the nutrient supply is not restricted. Instead, cells consume certain nutrients on a programmed basis, and there are mechanisms for nutrient distribution: cancer cells take up glutamine and fatty acids; immune cells take up glucose.
Understanding that cells in the tumor microenvironment use different nutrients may drive the creation of new cancer therapies that target specific types of cells, and more precise imaging of tumor tissue may be possible, said Bradley Reinfeld, Ph. Kimryn Rathmell, PhD, added, “We now have more advanced PET radioactive tracking that promises to track cancer cells through these specific substances.”
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