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Metabolic vulnerability in tumours illuminated

A tracer molecule has been used to analyse tumours in vivo in mice and to group cancers according to their metabolic characteristics. Such information could have implications for determining how different malignancies are treated.
  1. Aparna D. Rao

    1. Aparna D. Rao is at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas 75390, USA.

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  2. Ralph J. DeBerardinis

    1. Ralph J. DeBerardinis is at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas 75390, USA, and at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

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Altered energy metabolism is a hallmark of malignancy that can be harnessed to detect and treat cancer1. But tumours are metabolically diverse, so, for treatments to be targeted effectively, non-invasive methods are needed that can observe metabolic characteristics in vivo. Writing in Nature, Momcilovic and colleagues2 report that an imaging agent called 4-[18F]fluorobenzyl triphenylphosphonium (18FBnTP) can be used to identify tumours in mice that could be targeted by inhibitors of oxidative phosphorylation, one of the cellular pathways involved in energy production.

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Nature 575, 296-297 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03239-3

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