Rewiring Metabolism Slows Cancer Growth

Cancer is an unwanted experiment in progress. As the disease advances, tumor cells accumulate mutations, eventually arriving at ones that give them the insidious power to grow uncontrollably and spread. A study led by Jared Rutter, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry at the University of Utah, reports that cancers select against a protein complex called the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC), and re-introduction of MPC in colon cancer cells impairs several properties of cancer, including growth. The research appeared online on Oct. 30 in Molecular Cell. Rutter explains how the work implicates changes in a key step in metabolism – the way cellular fuel is utilized – as an important driver of cancer, and how the findings may be exploited to develop new cancer therapies.