Potential Cancer Treatment Discovered
Late cancer breakthroughs indicate that cancer cells genetically reprogram their energy-generating pathways to produce the units they need to develop and multiply, consuming a lot of energy in the process. Potential drugs that immobilize this footpath could provide a new method to handle a range of cancers.
“All tumors have to deal with shifting metabolism as they proliferate,” says Vander Heiden, who joined the Koch Institute last fall. “If you can interfere with that, you have a chance to make a difference across many tumor types.”
Sugar is a source of energy for the human cells, it does not call for oxygen and produces much less energy.
In 2008, Vander Heiden, Cantley and other scientists at Harvard Medical School accounted in the journal Nature that once the cells switch between normal and Warburg metabolism, they start using PKM2 instead of pyruvate kinase M1, the enzyme that every full-grown cells use for glycolysis (the first set of reactions called for to break down glucose for energy).
“All tumors have to deal with shifting metabolism as they proliferate,” says Vander Heiden, who joined the Koch Institute last fall. “If you can interfere with that, you have a chance to make a difference across many tumor types.”
Sugar is a source of energy for the human cells, it does not call for oxygen and produces much less energy.
In 2008, Vander Heiden, Cantley and other scientists at Harvard Medical School accounted in the journal Nature that once the cells switch between normal and Warburg metabolism, they start using PKM2 instead of pyruvate kinase M1, the enzyme that every full-grown cells use for glycolysis (the first set of reactions called for to break down glucose for energy).
