What do cellular responses to acidity tell us about cancer?

Journal article : Review

Abstract:: The notion that invasive cancer is a product of somatic evolution is a well-established theory that can be modelled mathematically and demonstrated empirically from therapeutic responses. Somatic evolution is by no means deterministic, and ample opportunities exist to steer its trajectory towards cancer cell extinction. One such strategy is to alter the chemical microenvironment shared between host and cancer cells in a way that no longer favours the latter. Ever since the first description of the Warburg effect, acidosis has been recognised as a key chemical signature of the tumour microenvironment. Recent findings have suggested that responses to acidosis, arising through a process of selection and adaptation, give cancer cells a competitive advantage over the host. A surge of research efforts has attempted to understand the basis of this advantage and seek ways of exploiting it therapeutically. Here, we review key findings and place these in the context of a mathematical framework. Looking ahead, we highlight areas relating to cellular adaptation, selection and heterogeneity that merit more research efforts in order to close-in on the goal of exploiting tumour acidity in future therapies.

Files:: Blaszczak_Swietach_2022_what_do_cellular.pdf

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Language:: English
Keywords:: metabolism

variation

acidosis

FFR

acid-base

evolution

phenotype

selection

cancer

adaptation

pH
Subtype:: Review
Pubs id:: 1211688
Local pid:: pubs:1211688
Deposit date:: 2021-11-22
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_6593bb5d91014f069ada118b3b7a0767

Copyright holder:: Blaszczak and Swietach
Rights statement:: © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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