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Why cancer cells waste so much energy - MIT News

Why cancer cells waste so much energy - MIT News

Why cancer cells waste so much energy - MIT News
Jan 15, 2021 1 min, 32 secs

In a study appearing in Molecular Cell, they showed that this metabolic pathway, known as fermentation, helps cells to regenerate large quantities of a molecule called NAD+, which they need to synthesize DNA and other important molecules.

Their findings also account for why other types of rapidly proliferating cells, such as immune cells, switch over to fermentation. .

Cells typically switch over to fermentation only when they don’t have enough oxygen available to perform aerobic respiration.

Since Warburg’s discovery, scientists have put forth many theories for why cancer cells switch to the inefficient fermentation pathway.

Warburg originally proposed that cancer cells’ mitochondria, where aerobic respiration occurs, might be damaged, but this turned out not to be the case.

They saw, as others have previously shown, that blocking fermentation slows down cancer cells’ growth.

One approach they tried was to stimulate the cells to produce NAD+, a molecule that helps cells to dispose of the extra electrons that are stripped out when cells make molecules such as DNA and proteins.

When the researchers treated the cells with a drug that stimulates NAD+ production, they found that the cells started rapidly proliferating again, even though they still couldn’t perform fermentation.

This led the researchers to theorize that when cells are growing rapidly, they need NAD+ more than they need ATP.

During aerobic respiration, cells produce a great deal of ATP and some NAD+.

If cells accumulate more ATP than they can use, respiration slows and production of NAD+ also slows.

The researchers tested this idea in other types of rapidly proliferating cells, including immune cells, and found that blocking fermentation but allowing alternative methods of NAD+ production enabled cells to continue rapidly dividing

The findings suggest that drugs that force cancer cells to switch back to aerobic respiration instead of fermentation could offer a possible way to treat tumors

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