The Metabolic Phenotype of Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is the most common non-cutaneous cancer in men in the United States. Cancer metabolism has emerged as a contemporary topic of great interest for improved mechanistic understanding of tumorigenesis. Prostate cancer is a disease model of great interest from a metabolic perspective. Prostatic tissue exhibits unique metabolic activity under baseline conditions. Benign prostate cells accumulate zinc, and this excess zinc inhibits citrate oxidation and metabolism within the citric acid cycle, effectively resulting in citrate production. Malignant cells, however, actively oxidize citrate and resume more typical citric acid cycle function. Of further interest, prostate cancer does not exhibit the Warburg effect, an increase in glucose uptake, seen in many other cancers. These cellular metabolic differences and others are of clinical interest as they present a variety of potential therapeutic targets. Furthermore, understanding of the metabolic profile differences between benign prostate versus low- and high-grade prostate cancers also represents an avenue to better understand cancer progression and potentially develop new diagnostic testing. In this paper, we review the current state of knowledge on the metabolic phenotypes of prostate cancer.