The Warburg effect: persistence of stem-cell metabolism in cancers as a failure of differentiation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Two recent observations regarding the Warburg effect are that (i) the metabolism of stem cells is constitutive (aerobic) glycolysis while normal cellular differentiation involves a transition to oxidative phosphorylation and (ii) the degree of glucose uptake of a malignancy as imaged by 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) is associated with histologic measures of tumor differentiation. Combining these observations, we hypothesized that the high levels of glucose uptake observed in poorly differentiated cancers may reflect persistence of the glycolytic metabolism of stem cells in malignant cells that fail to fully differentiate.

Patients and methods

Tumor glucose uptake was measured by FDG-PET in 552 patients with histologically diverse ca

SUBMITTER: Riester M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6658717 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature