Decoding Cancer Metabolism: Recent Insights and Future Directions

A special issue of Cells (ISSN 2073-4409).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 July 2025 | Viewed by 120

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Interests: cancer metabolism; immune metabolism; stem cells

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Guest Editor
Department of Cell, Developmental, & Integrative Biology, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL 35233, USA
Interests: cancer biology; nanotechnology; cell biology; theranostics; immunotherapy

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

A major hallmark of cancer is the dysregulation of cellular energetics. Recent advances in the field of cancer metabolism have revealed critical insights into how cancer cells change their metabolic pathways to support rapid growth and survival. Researchers have identified the key alterations in metabolic processes, such as increased glycolysis (Warburg effect), enhanced fatty acid synthesis, and reliance on glutamine. Interestingly, different types of cancer cells rely on different metabolic pathways and rewire their metabolism accordingly to thrive in stress conditions. Technologies like metabolomics and advanced imaging techniques have allowed scientists to visualize these changes in real time and understand their implications for tumor behavior. Furthermore, the interplay between metabolism and the tumor microenvironment has become a significant focus, highlighting how cancer cells manipulate the surrounding cells and nutrients to their advantage. Targeting these metabolic pathways offers promising therapeutic strategies, with several novel drugs in clinical trials aimed at disrupting the metabolic adaptations of cancer cells. These advances are paving the way for more effective and personalized cancer treatments.

The purpose of this Issue is to highlight the recent findings in cancer metabolism. The goal of this Issue is to provide a broad scope that includes research papers and reviews related to the specific interactions between cancer cells and immune cells or other microenvironment cells. Furthermore, how cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis are linked with physiological metabolism alteration will be discussed, along with targeting cancer cell metabolism as a vulnerability to induce cell death and novel mechanisms on how different proteins/molecules regulate cancer metabolism.

Dr. Parash Prasad
Dr. Snehasis R. Mishra
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • glutamine metabolism
  • Warburg effect
  • anaplerosis
  • fatty acid metabolism
  • ferroptosis
  • oncometabolites
  • hypoxia
  • mitochondrial dynamics
  • reactive oxygen species
  • glutathione synthesis
  • nutrient sensing

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