The Warburg Effect Revisited through Blood and Electron Flow

Abstract

The Warburg effect describes the propensity of many cancers to consume glucose avidly and convert it to lactate in the presence of oxygen. The benefit of the Warburg effect on cancer cells remains enigmatic, particularly because extracellular disposal of incompletely oxidized lactate is wasteful. However, lactate is not discarded from the body, but rather recycled as pyruvate for metabolism through the tricarboxylic acid cycle in oxidative tissues and cells. Hence, tissue and interorgan metabolism play important roles in tumor metabolism. The production of tumor lactate to be recycled elsewhere parallels the Cori cycle, in which lactate produced by muscle activity is shuttled to the liver, where it is converted to pyruvate and subsequently stored as glucose moieties in glycogen. This perspective will consider this organismal contextwhile discussing how glucose is used in tumors. We highlight several key articles published decades ago in Cancer Research that are foundational to our current understanding of cancer biology and metabolism.