Warburg hypothesis

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Warburg effect.
Scientist Otto Warburg, whose research activities led to the formulation of the Warburg hypothesis for explaining the root cause of cancer.

The Warburg hypothesis (

mitochondria.[1] The term Warburg effect in oncology describes the observation that cancer cells, and many cells grown in vitro, exhibit glucose fermentation even when enough oxygen is present to properly respire.[2][3] In other words, instead of fully respiring in the presence of adequate oxygen, cancer cells ferment. The Warburg hypothesis was that the Warburg effect was the root cause of cancer. The current popular opinion is that cancer cells ferment glucose while keeping up the same level of respiration that was present before the process of carcinogenesis, and thus the Warburg effect would be defined as the observation that cancer cells exhibit glycolysis with lactate production and mitochondrial respiration even in the presence of oxygen.[4][5]

Hypothesis

The

mitochondrial
respiration. Warburg regarded the fundamental difference between normal and cancerous cells to be the ratio of glycolysis to respiration; this observation is also known as the Warburg effect.

In the somatic mutation theory of cancer, malignant proliferation is caused by

hypoxic (oxygen-deficient) conditions inside solid tumors, and results largely from the same mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes that cause the other abnormal characteristics of cancer cells.[9]
Therefore, the metabolic change observed by Warburg is not so much the cause of cancer, as he claimed, but rather, it is one of the characteristic effects of cancer-causing mutations.

Warburg articulated his hypothesis in a paper entitled The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer which he presented in lecture at the meeting of the Nobel-Laureates on June 30, 1966 at

anaerobiosis seen in cancer cells was a consequence of damaged or insufficient respiration. Put in his own words, "the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar."[10]

The body often kills damaged cells by apoptosis, a mechanism of self-destruction that involves mitochondria, but this mechanism fails in cancer cells where the mitochondria are shut down. The reactivation of mitochondria in cancer cells restarts their apoptosis program.[11]

Continuing research and interest

A large number of researchers have dedicated and are dedicating their efforts to the study of the Warburg effect that is intimately associated with the Warburg hypothesis. In oncology, the Warburg effect is the observation that most

mitochondria as in most normal cells.[14][15][16] Interestingly, researchers found that under obesity, tumor cells invert the metabolic flow by producing glucose by gluconeogenesis using lactic acid and other metabolic sources as substrates. This process in known as Warburg effect inversion.[17]

In particular, almost 18,000 publications have been published on the matter of ATP and the Warburg effect in the period 2000 to 2015. Most of the functions of the Warburg Effect have been the object of study.[18] Thousands of publications claim to have determined its functions or causes. Thomas N. Seyfried and Peter L. Pedersen are leading supporters of the Warburg hypothesis of the cause of cancer and consider experimental and other evidence to overwhelming favor it over the widely accepted somatic mutation theory.[19]

See also

References

  1. PMID 13298683
    .
  2. PMID 25621294
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  3. S2CID 231437641
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  4. PMID 25621294
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  5. PMID 20459610
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  6. ^ O. Warburg, K. Posener, E. Negelein: Ueber den Stoffwechsel der Tumoren; Biochemische Zeitschrift, Vol. 152, pp. 319-344, 1924. (in German). Reprinted in English in the book On metabolism of tumors by O. Warburg, Publisher: Constable, London, 1930.
  7. S2CID 24155688
    .
  8. S2CID 12467031
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  9. S2CID 17778749
    .
  10. PMID 20737302
    .
  11. S2CID 477272
    .
  12. PMID 25621294
    .
  13. PMID 26864256
    .
  14. PMID 24310355
    .
  15. S2CID 10866959
    .
  16. PMID 16982728
    .
  17. S2CID 76665891
    .
  18. ^ The Warburg Effect: How Does it Benefit Cancer Cells? Trends in Biochemical Sciences- M.V. Liberti, J.W. Locasale. January 2016
  19. ISBN 9780470584927
    .

Further reading
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