1. Most cancer cells rely on aerobic glycolysis, known as the Warburg effect, which is an inefficient way to generate ATP but facilitates the production of biomass needed for cell proliferation.
2. Understanding the Warburg effect could allow researchers to stage and "fingerprint" tumors based on their metabolic profiles and capacity for invasiveness and proliferation.
3. Targeting metabolic pathways and symbiotic relationships involved in biomass production and that support proliferation, such as lactate transport between hypoxic and oxygenated tumor cells, may provide approaches for combination anti-cancer therapies using metabolic inhibitors.