Category: Cancer metabolism

While the "Warburg effect," the observation that cancer cells consume high amounts of glucose, has been known for nearly a century, modern research reveals a more complex picture of what nutrients do cancer cells need to grow. Cancer cells are not simply sugar-addicts; they are metabolically flexible opportunists that adapt to exploit various food sources for survival and proliferation, especially within the nutrient-scarce tumor microenvironment.

Over the past two decades, research has revealed that cancer cells often display a marked dependence on the amino acid glutamine. This phenomenon, known as glutamine addiction, refers to the metabolic reprogramming that makes cancer cells heavily reliant on this nutrient for survival and proliferation, unlike normal cells.