Pancreatic cancer stem cells are virtually addicted to oxygen-based metabolism, and could be "suffocated" with a drug already used to treat diabetes, a new study has found. Cancer cells commonly rely on glycolysis, the type of metabolism that does not use oxygen to generate their energy. However, researchers found that not all cancer cells are alike when it comes to metabolism.
Pancreatic cancer stem cells (PancSCs) can make use of a more efficient form of metabolism, called oxidative phosphorylation or OXPHOS, which does use oxygen. OXPHOS uses a part of the cell called mitochondria and it is this which can be targeted with anti-diabetic drug, metformin. Some PancSCs are however able to escape this treatment by being much more flexible in their metabolism, leading to a recurrence of the cancer, but the investigators also found a way to prevent such resistance and force all PancSCs to…
