What Is The Relationship Between Sugar And Tumors?

Author: Mark Velov Time for reading: ~1 minutes Last Updated: August 08, 2022

In this article, learn more about What Is The Relationship Between Sugar And Tumors?. How does the metabolism of tumor cells differ from that of normal ones?.

Tumor cells require more energy to grow and divide than normal cells. That is why they consume more glucose. Not only that, but they process it faster - their metabolism is accelerated. This phenomenon is known as the Warburg effect.

Most recently, a Belgian team of molecular biologists for the first time and unequivocally proved the role of sugar in this process. According to their research, the Warburg effect stimulates tumor growth .

There is much speculation about the impact of sugar on health and its increased intake is considered a risk factor for many diseases - including malignant.

With their discovery, the researchers shed light on the vicious circle of sugar-stimulated tumor growth - degenerate cells process it very quickly, which further stimulates their growth, for this purpose they metabolize glucose even faster ... That is, it does not cause the emergence of glucose. tumor cells , but in the appearance of such increases their proliferation.

Glucose is the main "fuel" that all cells work on, but then why does it have such an effect only on tumors? This is because while the cells that make up our body break it down with the help of oxygen, tumor cells prefer another way to extract energy from glucose - anaerobic .

For the purpose of these studies, yeast was used, which proved to be a particularly suitable model for a tumor cell - it also used an anaerobic pathway to supply energy, and also had a certain type of PAC proteins . What is special about them is that they are associated with the growth of cells and when there are mutations in them, it becomes uncontrollable.

Such PAC proteins are also found in tumor cells. The team is trying to clarify the relationship between sugar and PAC protein activity.

It remains to be seen whether this breakthrough in science will have practical application in medicine

What Is The Relationship Between Sugar And Tumors?

Related Articles