Cell Stress, Metabolic Reprogramming, and Cancer

2018

The hallmarks of cancer comprise six biological capabilities acquired during the multistep development of human tumors: sustaining proliferative signaling, evading growth suppressors, resisting cell death, enabling replicative immortality, inducing angiogenesis, and activating invasion and metastasis (1). Mitochondria, beyond being the site of aerobic respiration, are at the crossroads of a variety of metabolic and signaling pathways resulting key regulatory organelles in cell life and death decision. Thus, it is no surprise that genomic, functional, and structural mitochondrial alterations have been associated with cancer and that mitochondria have become a pharmacological target in cancer…