Alterations in cancer cell metabolism: The Warburg effect and metabolic adaptation

The Warburg effect means higher glucose uptake of cancer cells compared to normal tissues, whereas a smaller fraction of this glucose is employed for oxidative phosphorylation. With the advent of high throughput technologies and computational systems biology, cancer cell metabolism has been reinvestigated over the last decades toward identifying various events underlying “how” and “why” a cancer cell employs aerobic glycolysis. Significant progress has been shaped to revise the Warburg effect. In this study, we have integrated the gene expression of 13 different cancer cells with the genome-scale metabolic network of human (Recon1) based on the E-Flux method, and analyzed them based on constraint-based modeling. Results show that regardless of significant up- and down-regulated metabolic genes, the distribution of metabolic changes is similar in different cancer types. These findings support the theory that the Warburg effect is a consequence of metabolic adaptation in cancer cells.