Tumour Metabolism

Question 1

What are potential therapeutic targets in treating tumours with altered metabolism?

Answer 1

There are many different targets from intermediates in the metabolic pathways or enzymes or receptors that change metabolism. Or oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes that regulate it. Or HIF

Question 2

Is there a therapy target that is an Achille heal to treating tumours? Why or why not? How can you maximize the efficiency of treatment?

Answer 2

There isn’t an optimal therapy target that will stop tumours from growing because the pathways and molecules have functional redundancy, they are plastic, complex, interconnected pathways that can compensate each other’s function.
Toxicity is another issue or the opposite that some tissues won’t be affected because they don’t have high metabolism,
Optimal treatment is synthetic lethality, personalized, target many different levels of the pathway and different molecules

Question 3

How is metabolism changed in tumours?

Answer 3

Environment, if the tumour is hypoxic then there will be stabilization of HIF that regulate metabolism, there will be and increase in pentose phosphate pathway and fatty acid synthesis, a decrease in kreb cycle.