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Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Preparation and Metabolic Assay of 3-dimensional Spheroid Co-cultures of Pancreatic Cancer Cells and Fibroblasts
Published on: August 23, 2017
Metabolic features of cancer cells
Yugang Wang1, Yan Xia1, Zhimin Lu2,3,4
1Brain Tumor Center and Department of Neuro-Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
Abstract:
Cancer cells uniquely reprogram their cellular activities to support their rapid proliferation and migration and to counteract metabolic and genotoxic stress during cancer progression. In this reprograming, cancer cells' metabolism and other cellular activities are integrated and mutually regulated, and cancer cells modulate metabolic enzymes spatially and temporally so that these enzymes not only have altered metabolic activities but also have modulated subcellular localization and gain non-canonical functions. This review and several others in this issue of Cancer Communications discuss these enzymes' newly acquired functions and the non-canonical functions of some metabolites as features of cancer cell metabolism, which play critical roles in various cellular activities, including gene expression, anabolism, catabolism, redox homeostasis, and DNA repair.
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