Disrupting cancer cells' energy
A healthy cell relies on its mitochondria (descendants of bacteria that took up residence in the single-celled ancestors of animals and plants about 2 billion years ago) to oxidise sugar molecules and release useful energy. Most cancer cells, however, use a less efficient mechanism called glycolysis to power themselves. They thus cut their mitochondria out of the loop.
That cancer cells often rely on glycolysis was discovered by Otto Warburg in 1930. But until recently the Warburg effect, as it has come to be known, was little more than a curiosityand a contentious one at that. Now, it looks a lot more interesting, for Evangelos Michelakis and his colleagues at the University of Alberta, in Canada, are testing a drug called dichloroacetate that suppresses the Warburg effect and reactivates the mitochondria. The result shows why mitochondrial suppression is so important to tumours: when they are unsuppressed, the tumour they are in stops growing.