Simplified picture of cancer metabolism

A simplified picture of cancer metabolism. Glycolysis is a multistage process of glucose transformation into pyruvate in the presence of specific enzymes. The obtained pyruvate can be further converted to lactic acid (aerobic glycolysis) or access the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, which leads to its full metabolization to CO2. The NADH and FADH2 released during the TCA cycle trigger the electron transport chain, which gives rise to oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos). It turns out that aerobic glycolysis is a prime metabolic pathway to provide energy in cancer cells, while pyruvate oxidation is reduced, despite its higher energetic efficiency. Due to the high demand for NADH and the TCA cycle intermediates (needed to synthesize amino acids, nucleotides, and lipids), cancer cells render glutamine to sustain the tricarboxylic acid cycle in a process called glutaminolysis, where glutamine is converted to glutamate and further to α-ketoglutarate in the presence of glutaminase (GLS), GDH1, and/or other enzymes to, finally, enter the TCA cycle. Created with BioRender.com, (accessed on 27 September 2022).

Publication

Potassium Channels, Glucose Metabolism and Glycosylation in Cancer Cells (2023) Agata Wawrzkiewicz-Jałowiecka, et al. Int J Mol Sci. 2023 May;24(9). Figure: F1. Homo sapiens

Disease mentions