Glutamine and cancer: cell biology, physiology, and clinical opportunities
Christopher T. Hensley(Children's Medical Center), Ajla Wasti(The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center), Ralph J. DeBerardinis(The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center)
Cited by 1,248Open Access
Abstract
Glutamine is an abundant and versatile nutrient that participates in energy formation, redox homeostasis, macromolecular synthesis, and signaling in cancer cells. These characteristics make glutamine metabolism an appealing target for new clinical strategies to detect, monitor, and treat cancer. Here we review the metabolic functions of glutamine as a super nutrient and the surprising roles of glutamine in supporting the biological hallmarks of malignancy. We also review recent efforts in imaging and therapeutics to exploit tumor cell glutamine dependence, discuss some of the challenges in this arena, and suggest a disease-focused paradigm to deploy these emerging approaches.
Related Papers
Beyond aerobic glycolysis: Transformed cells can engage in glutamine metabolism that exceeds the requirement for protein and nucleotide synthesis
Ralph J. DeBerardinis, Anthony Mancuso, Evgueni Daikhin et al.|Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|2007|2.6k