Reexamining How Cancer Cells Exploit the Body's Metabolic Resources

A key feature of multicellular life is the sharing of nutritional resources by all cells of the organism. In animals, the allocation of nutrients to individual cells is not determined in a cell-autonomous fashion. Instead, growth factor and hormonal signaling pathways have evolved to regulate cellular nutrient uptake, which prevents individual cells from parasitizing the organism's metabolic reserves. Cancer is a condition where the highly ordered regulation of nutrient distribution is disrupted. During carcinogenesis, transformed cells acquire mutations in signaling pathways that render nutrient uptake cell-autonomous. A deeper understanding of how the acquisition of potential nutrients is regulated may help develop improved approaches to cancer therapy.