Targeting fatty acid metabolism in head and neck cancer

Abstract

Reprogramming of cellular metabolism is an important, emerging, and universal hallmark of cancer which has received considerable attention during the recent era of cancer research. Cancer cells show characteristic alterations in glucose metabolism in order to fulfill the needs of biosynthesis for tumor proliferation and growth. However, under certain circumstances such as invasion and metastasis, cancer cells are prone to metabolic stress and will require different strategies to meet the high energetic demand from cancer progression. From various metabolic rewiring mechanisms, cancer cells adopt other metabolic pathways with alternative nutrient sources. Therefore, targeting cancer metabolism holds promising but great challenge caused by the metabolic plasticity of cancer cells. This review will discuss characteristic cancer metabolism in detail with special focus on lipid metabolism which is gathering increasingly keen interest, in order to find novel therapeutic approaches to head and neck cancer. By understanding and exploiting the synthesis, oxidation, and storage of fatty acids, we could investigate potential strategies to block cancer proliferation and progression.