The Molecular Link from Diet to Cancer Cell Metabolism

Malignant cells remodel their metabolism to meet the demands of uncontrolled cell proliferation. These demands lead to differential requirements in energy, biosynthetic precursors, and signaling intermediates. Both genetic programs arising from oncogenic events and transcriptional programs and epigenomic events are important in providing the necessary metabolic network activity. Accumulating evidence has established that environmental factors play a major role in shaping cancer cell metabolism. For metabolism, diet and nutrition are the major environmental aspects and have emerged as key components in determining cancer cell metabolism. In this review, we discuss these emerging concepts in cancer metabolism and how diet and nutrition influence cancer cell metabolism.