Cancer’s Multi-Fuel Strategy Is Changing How We Treat It

The very trait that makes your metabolism healthy can make cancer deadly.
Metabolic flexibility—the cells’ ability to switch efficiently between fuel sources such as glucose and fat—is usually a hallmark of good health. However, when cancer cells gain the same adaptability, it becomes their survival advantage, enabling tumors to evade treatment and resist even the most targeted therapies.
This paradox is forcing researchers to rethink decades of cancer treatment strategies and develop new approaches that simultaneously attack tumors on multiple metabolic fronts.
Cancer’s Multiple Fuel Sources
For nearly a century, our understanding of cancer metabolism was shaped by German biochemist Otto Warburg, who observed that cancer cells consume large amounts of glucose even when oxygen is abundant. The “Warburg effect” led scientists to believe that tumors relied almost exclusively on sugar for fuel, inspiring metabolic therapies aimed at starving cancer by cutting off its glucose supply….

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