Novel Therapeutics Affecting Metabolic Pathways.

Cancer cells are known to have distinct metabolic characteristics compared with normal cells, given the catabolic and anabolic demands of increased cell growth and proliferation. This altered metabolism in cancer cells imbues differential dependencies, and substantial effort has been invested in developing therapeutic strategies to exploit these potential vulnerabilities. Parallel to these efforts has been a growing appreciation for the presence of notable intratumoral metabolic heterogeneity. Although many novel agents are showing some promising results in targeting specific metabolic processes, the challenge moving forward will be to develop combination strategies to address the aforementioned metabolic heterogeneity and its interplay with both epigenetic and immune factors in the tumor microenvironment. In this review, we discuss recent developments in targeting tumor catabolism, lipid biosynthesis, glycolysis, and the citric acid cycle as well as efforts to combine these approaches with immunotherapy.