Metabolic plasticity of cancer cells

A general characteristic of cancer metabolism is the skill to gain the essential nutrients from a relatively poor environment and use them effectively to maintain viability and create new bio-mass. The changes in intracellular and extracellular metabolites that accompany metabolic reprogramming associated with tumor growth subsequently affect gene expression, cell differentiation, and tumor microenvironment. During carcinogenesis, cancer cells face huge selection pressures that force them to constantly optimize dominant metabolic pathways and undergo major metabolic reorganizations. In general, greater flexibility of metabolic pathways increases the ability of tumor cells to satisfy their metabolic needs in a changing environment.

In this review, we discuss the metabolic properties of cancer cells and describe the tumor promoting effect of the transformed metabolism. We assume that changes in metabolism are significant enough to facilitate tumorigenesis and may provide interesting targets for cancer therapy.