The Metabolic Theory of Cancer

A brief history.

During Warburgs last speech in 1966, aged 82, the scientific crowd probably their eyes as he continued to state that cancer was an energy production problem, metabolism gone wrong. For years, he tried to persuade the scientific community that they were looking at cancer the wrong way.

‘Cancer above all diseases, has countless secondary causes. But even for cancer, there is only one primary cause; the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar’.

To shift from aerobic to anaerobic energy production was the signature difference between cancer cells and normal cells. Warburg reasoned that cancer was simply a permanent alteration to cellular respiration. Anaerobic respiration is far less efficient, much much less efficient and only happens in extreme circumstances. Say you’re running away from a tiger at full speed, eventually aerobic respiration can’t keep up with the energy demand, so anaerobic respiration comes into action by glycolysis breaking down glucose into two molecules of pyruvate, basically glucose gets shoved into the cell for fermentation to give you that last kick.

Back to cancer, Warburg sadly dies without being taken seriously regarding faulty metabolism and cancer. It’s hard to say why, perhaps people thought it was too simple. Furthermore, the field of genetics was up and coming. DNA damage seemed so juicy and interesting at the time (in relation to cancer) that it soaked up all the attention. It wasn’t until Pederson, an up and coming researcher picked up where Warburg left of. He took a liking to Warburgs work and couldn’t understand why more people weren’t looking into it.

Pederson really found the how to Warburgs why, he identified clearly through PET scans that almost every cancer tumor had faulty respiration and too few mitochondria. More importantly pederson found that cancer cells switched from its normal hexokinase isozyme to a rare ancient form, hexokinase 2. This enzyme basically keeps the cell gates permanently wide open, allowing glucose to flood into it. We’re talking about some real ancient abilities here, hexokinase 2 could be from a time when we found ourselves in a low oxygen environment.

So what does this all mean?

Before I dive into the implications, I just want to touch on why cancer treatments haven’t progressed significantly in the past 100 years (compared to other conditions). For about 80 years or so, we’ve been obsessed with a genetic origin of cancer, namely the somatic mutation theory (SMT), the idea that cancer begins with a genetic change in a single cell that passes it on to its progeny. However, after billions of dollars of research, all we found was that each tumour has very unique oncogenes. There wasn't a broad characteristic that we could target with a drug, this unfortunate truth revealed itself as time went on and ultimately meant that treatments didn’t move forward.

So now we finally find ourselves coming back around to some of these older theories which were disregarded such as the metabolic malfunction of cancer cells. Now, you might be wondering what all this means with faulty metabolism and anaerobic respiration, i.e knowing this, what might you do differently.

If the nature of cancer is anaerobic respiration and the fermentation of sugar, you might be thinking, so eating less sugar would help? Although that assumption seems logical, in reality, we really don’t know if more sugar in the body translates to further faults of cellular respiration. However, it is a fact that many cancer patients have had success following a ketogenic diet for a period of time to stem cancer growth. Perhaps forcing the body to ‘burn’ ketones and subsequently changing the energy pathway prevents cancer cells from fueling their dark plans. It’s hard to say. Small bouts of fasting is also another practice that seems to have positive effects on cancer.

But maybe more importantly, it seems logical to look at mitochondria more closely given they are fundamental in energy production. As Pederson found, the mitochondria of cancer cells seemed to be locked in a closed loop of poor energy production. Maybe keeping mitochondria and the energy chains within them like the ECT flowing freely is the key to keeping cancer at bay. We know that leakage from lactic acid build up from anaerobic respiration causes damage to the cell. There might be a critical threshold reached where the cell can no longer activate apoptosis (cell death) and the mitochondria simply become slaves to the diseased system.

There are many things that you can do to keep mitochondria and ultimately aerobic respiration happy, one of which simply involves keeping the balance of energy in and energy out. Too much intake and too little exercise causes free radical build up within the cell. Magnesium clearly has its role too in keeping the small cities of cells happy along with their enzymes. I would certainly be looking to keep my mitochondria well fed in any case, information on aiding their proper function can be found in my other article on Mitochondria.