[HTML][HTML] Lactate and cancer: revisiting the Warburg effect in an era of lactate shuttling

ML Goodwin, LB Gladden, MWN Nijsten… - Frontiers in …, 2015 - frontiersin.org
Frontiers in nutrition, 2015frontiersin.org
Despite causing over half a million deaths per year, cancer continues to elude our
understanding and evade our therapeutic approaches. Our comprehension of cancer
metabolism lags woefully behind other areas of cancer research. Starting with the seminal
experiments done in the 1920s by the Cori's and Warburg (1, 2), tumors are often described
as being glucose avid tissues that produce lactate despite adequate oxygen (O2) tension
(ie, the “Warburg Effect”). Only recently, we have begun to understand that tumor cell …
Despite causing over half a million deaths per year, cancer continues to elude our understanding and evade our therapeutic approaches. Our comprehension of cancer metabolism lags woefully behind other areas of cancer research. Starting with the seminal experiments done in the 1920s by the Cori’s and Warburg (1, 2), tumors are often described as being glucose avid tissues that produce lactate despite adequate oxygen (O2) tension (ie, the “Warburg Effect”). Only recently, we have begun to understand that tumor cell metabolism is significantly more complicated. Specifically, insight from the study of lactate metabolism has shed light on the peculiar metabolic nature of tumor cells. Here, we present a brief overview of some of the recent developments in the ever expanding literature on lactate metabolism and cancer.
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