Recent High Impact Publication
New work from Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, Jeffrey Rathmell, PhD, Bradley Reinfeld, and Matthew Madden and colleagues was published in Nature this week.The group investigated the prevailing wisdom that tumors have high glucose uptake, which serves as the basis for FDG-PET cancer imaging. By carefully characterizing the glucose and glutamine utilization patterns of different cell types in the tumor microenvironment, they established that cancer cells and immune cells maintain unique metabolic programs. Surprisingly, glucose uptake was highest in infiltrating immune cells such as macrophages, while cancer cells displayed high glutamine and lipid uptake. Similar trends were observed across a range of cancer types including colorectal, kidney and breast cancer. This deeper understanding of the metabolic relationships within tumors gives important context for interpreting clinical tumor imaging results, and may ultimately inform new strategies for treatment.
View the VUMC Reporter article to learn more and read the original investigation in Nature.