Exam 2 Flashcards
Why does metabolism reprogramming occur?
Cancer cells reprogram their metabolism in order to rapidly grow
Do cancer cells exhibit aerobic respiration (oxidative phosphorylation) or glycolytic processes or both?
Both; Glycolysis just makes more acetate even in the presence of O2 (aerobic glycolysis)
What is the Warburg effect?
Tumor cells take up excess glucose and convert to lactate via glycolysis regardless of O2 concentration
Epigenetic mechanisms of reprogramming
metabolites act as co-factors and substrates of chromatin-modifying enzymes
How do oncogenes cause reprogramming?
Oncogenes like Myc, HIF-1a, and p53 act as transcription factors for metabolism-associated genes
Advantages of metabolic reprogramming
More nucleotides and biosynthetic starting materials in a shorter time, allows for shortened cell cycle and faster replication
What precursor do cancer cells need for nucleotide synthesis?
Ribose-5-phosphate from the pentose phosphate pathway
What precursor do cancer cells need for phospholipid synthesis?
Glycerol-3-phosphate
What precursor do cancer cells need to synthesize serine and glycine?
3-phosphate-glycerate
How do tumor cells suppress T cells?
tumor cells release more lactic acid to the extracellular microenvironment via the Warburg effect, and the lowered pH suppresses T cell immune response
What causes metabolic reprogramming?
Oncogenic factors like aberrant TFs, and environmental factors like diet
Oncometabolites
metabolites that are overproduced due to mutations and play a role in carcinogenesis
Example of oncometabolite pathway
Mutant isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) converts isocitrate into 2-hydroxyglutarate (instead of alpha-ketoglutarate) which inhibits histone methylases and prolyl hydroxylase, which degrades HIF-1a
HIF-1a
increases Warburg effect and angiogenesis
What cancer does IDH mutation cause?
acute myeloid leukemia (AML) - cancer of blood and bone marrow
What is a treatment for AML?
Enaisidenib is an oral allosteric inhibitor of IDH2 (Brand names Agios and Celgene)
What are the causative factors of diet?
Carcinogenic contaminants, dietary deficiencies, obesity, chronic alcohol consumption
What are the preventative factors of diet?
Antioxidants/ROS scavengers, nutrigenomics
Nutrigenomics
Dietary constituents can affect the expression of genes
Why is eating healthier better than taking supplements?
Single-component supplements have been shown to increase cancer incidence in some cases, plus eating healthier allows you to reap the other benefits (antioxidants, less obesity, etc.)
How does folate deficiency contribute to cancer?
reduction in folate derivatives results in DNA synthesis inhibition/DNA instability (mutations) and genomic hypomethylation
How does methotrexate work?
methotrexate competes with dihydrofolate, and inhibits dihydrofolate reductase, which in turn inhibits DNA synthesis; this is the opposite of what folate does
How is asparagine manipulated to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)?
ALL cells have a poor ability to synthesize asparagine, so treatment with asparaginase depletes asparagine levels
What are totipotent cells?
Stem cells that can give rise to all cell types plus extraembryonic cell types; only found in first few divisions after fertilization
What are pluripotent cells?
Stem cells that can give rise to any body cell type
What are transit-amplifying cells?
undifferentiated cells transitioning to differentiation
How are stem cells protected?
location, slow proliferation, apoptosis, Mdr1, conserved strand
Stem cells location
stem cells are usually located somewhere that is hard to get to; carcinogens have limited access
How fast do stem cells proliferate?
stem cells usually do not proliferate actively; when they do, it’s slow
What is Mdr1?
Multi-drug resistance 1 - protein in stem cells that can pump out most chemicals
Conserved strand hypothesis
Template strand is conserved through stem cells; daughter that receives non-template strand becomes transit-amplifying
Cancer stem cells (CSCs)
subpopulation of tumor cells that can self-renew and give rise to phenotypically diverse cancer cells with limited proliferative potential that make up the rest of the tumor
What proportion of tumor cells are CSCs?
a small subfraction; 1 in 1,000,000 in AML