Cancer metabolism: what we can learn from proteomic analysis by mass spectrometry

A variety of genomic and proteomic tools have been used to study cancer metabolism and metabolomics in order to understand how cancer cells survive in their environment. Throughout the past decade, mass spectrometry has been routinely used for large-scale protein identification of complex biological mixtures. In this review, we discuss some recent developments in cancer metabolism by proteomic analysis using mass spectrometric techniques, focusing on pyruvate kinase, L-lactate dehydrogenase, Warburg effect, glutamine metabolism and oxidative stress.