Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University, SE-90187 Umeå, Sweden.
Int J Mol Sci. 2019 Mar 19;20(6):1385. doi: 10.3390/ijms20061385.
Tumor cells exhibit a specialized metabolism supporting their superior ability for rapid proliferation, migration, and apoptotic evasion. It is reasonable to assume that the specific metabolic needs of the tumor cells can offer an array of therapeutic windows as pharmacological disturbance may derail the biochemical mechanisms necessary for maintaining the tumor characteristics, while being less important for normally proliferating cells. In addition, the specialized metabolism may leave a unique metabolic signature which could be used clinically for diagnostic or prognostic purposes. Quantitative global metabolic profiling (metabolomics) has evolved over the last two decades. However, despite the technology's present ability to measure 1000s of endogenous metabolites in various clinical or biological specimens, there are essentially no examples of metabolomics investigations being translated into actual utility in the cancer clinic. This review investigates the current efforts of using metabolomics as a tool for translation of tumor metabolism into the clinic and further seeks to outline paths for increasing the momentum of using tumor metabolism as a biomarker and drug target opportunity.
肿瘤细胞表现出一种特殊的代谢方式，支持其快速增殖、迁移和逃避凋亡的卓越能力。可以合理地假设，肿瘤细胞的特定代谢需求可以提供一系列治疗窗口，因为药物干扰可能破坏维持肿瘤特征所需的生化机制，而对正常增殖的细胞则不太重要。此外，特殊的代谢可能会留下独特的代谢特征，可用于临床诊断或预后目的。定量全局代谢谱分析（代谢组学）在过去二十年中得到了发展。然而，尽管该技术目前能够测量各种临床或生物标本中数千种内源性代谢物，但实际上几乎没有将代谢组学研究转化为癌症临床实际应用的例子。这篇综述探讨了目前将代谢组学作为将肿瘤代谢转化为临床应用的工具的努力，并进一步寻求为利用肿瘤代谢作为生物标志物和药物靶点机会增加动力的途径。
