Metabolism and Cancer
Can cancer's dependence on sugar help researchers find new targets to treat the disease? By William G. Nelson, MD, PhD
Cancer cells ingest copious amounts of the simple sugar glucose. This addiction may hold the key to how cancer can be treated.
All cancers start as a single rogue cell that begins to reproduce itself uncontrollably. One cancer cell becomes two, two become four, four become eight and so forth until a billion or more have appeared, often in the form of a tumor that can be felt or detected through radiographic imaging. Cancer cell replication, if unchecked, often leads to invasion of normal organs and metastasis to remote sites in the body, threatening life.
To fashion two cancer cells from one, every cell component—DNA, RNA, protein, fat and carbohydrates—needs to be duplicated. A living human cell needs at least 6 billion DNA base-pairs, billions of protein molecules, and enough fat molecules to form an enveloping membrane. Fabrication of a new cancer cell also requires energy. In the human body, normal cells obtain the energy needed for building cell components by metabolizing glucose and producing “fuel,” adenosine triphosphate (ATP). When oxygen is readily available, glucose is metabolized to produce pyruvate, which is delivered to the mitochondrion, the cell’s “engine room,” where ATP is created. In the absence of oxygen, glucose tends to be metabolized to lactate, with a low yield of ATP.
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