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A computational study of the Warburg effect identifies metabolic targets inhibiting cancer migration.

ABSTRACT: Over the last decade, the field of cancer metabolism has mainly focused on studying the role of tumorigenic metabolic rewiring in supporting cancer proliferation. Here, we perform the first genome-scale computational study of the metabolic underpinnings of cancer migration. We build genome-scale metabolic models of the NCI-60 cell lines that capture the Warburg effect (aerobic glycolysis) typically occurring in cancer cells. The extent of the Warburg effect in each of these cell line models is quantified by the ratio of glycolytic to oxidative ATP flux (AFR), which is found to be highly positively associated with cancer cell migration. We hence predicted that targeting genes that mitigate the Warburg effect by reducing the AFR may specifically inhibit cancer migration. By testing the anti-migratory effects of silencing such 17 top predicted genes in four breast and lung cancer cell lines, we find that up to 13 of these novel predictions significantly attenuate cell migration either in all or one cell line only, while having almost no effect on cell proliferation. Furthermore, in accordance with the predictions, a significant reduction is observed in the ratio between experimentally measured ECAR and OCR levels following these perturbations. Inhibiting anti-migratory targets is a promising future avenue in treating cancer since it may decrease cytotoxic-related side effects that plague current anti-proliferative treatments. Furthermore, it may reduce cytotoxic-related clonal selection of more aggressive cancer cells and the likelihood of emerging resistance.

SUBMITTER: Yizhak K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4299514 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A computational study of the Warburg effect identifies metabolic targets inhibiting cancer migration.

Yizhak Keren K Le Dévédec Sylvia E SE Rogkoti Vasiliki Maria VM Baenke Franziska F de Boer Vincent C VC Frezza Christian C Schulze Almut A van de Water Bob B Ruppin Eytan E

Molecular systems biology 20140801

Over the last decade, the field of cancer metabolism has mainly focused on studying the role of tumorigenic metabolic rewiring in supporting cancer proliferation. Here, we perform the first genome-scale computational study of the metabolic underpinnings of cancer migration. We build genome-scale metabolic models of the NCI-60 cell lines that capture the Warburg effect (aerobic glycolysis) typically occurring in cancer cells. The extent of the Warburg effect in each of these cell line models is q ...[more]

PMID: 25086087

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Project description:Cancer metabolism has received renewed interest as a potential target for cancer therapy. In this study, we use a multi-scale modeling approach to interrogate the implications of three metabolic scenarios of potential clinical relevance: the Warburg effect, the reverse Warburg effect and glutamine addiction. At the intracellular level, we construct a network of central metabolism and perform flux balance analysis (FBA) to estimate metabolic fluxes; at the cellular level, we exploit this metabolic network to calculate parameters for a coarse-grained description of cellular growth kinetics; and at the multicellular level, we incorporate these kinetic schemes into the cellular automata of an agent-based model (ABM), iDynoMiCS. This ABM evaluates the reaction-diffusion of the metabolites, cellular division and motion over a simulation domain. Our multi-scale simulations suggest that the Warburg effect provides a growth advantage to the tumor cells under resource limitation. However, we identify a non-monotonic dependence of growth rate on the strength of glycolytic pathway. On the other hand, the reverse Warburg scenario provides an initial growth advantage in tumors that originate deeper in the tissue. The metabolic profile of stromal cells considered in this scenario allows more oxygen to reach the tumor cells in the deeper tissue and thus promotes tumor growth at earlier stages. Lastly, we suggest that glutamine addiction does not confer a selective advantage to tumor growth with glutamine acting as a carbon source in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, any advantage of glutamine uptake must come through other pathways not included in our model (e.g., as a nitrogen donor). Our analysis illustrates the importance of accounting explicitly for spatial and temporal evolution of tumor microenvironment in the interpretation of metabolic scenarios and hence provides a basis for further studies, including evaluation of specific therapeutic strategies that target metabolism.

Dataset Information

A computational study of the Warburg effect identifies metabolic targets inhibiting cancer migration.

Publications

A computational study of the Warburg effect identifies metabolic targets inhibiting cancer migration.

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