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Tension in tumour cells keeps metabolism high

Tumours are often stiffer than normal tissues and show abnormally fast metabolism of glucose. It emerges that the link between these two traits involves tension in a network of protein filaments in cells.
  1. Nadia M. E. Ayad

    1. Nadia M. E. Ayad is in the Department of Surgery and the Center for Bioengineering and Tissue Regeneration, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143, USA, and in the University of California, Berkeley–University of California, San Francisco, Graduate Program in Bioengineering.

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  2. Valerie M. Weaver

    1. Valerie M. Weaver is in the Department of Surgery and the Center for Bioengineering and Tissue Regeneration, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143, USA.

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Tension in cells and tissues has crucial roles in an organism’s development and maintenance1. Tension-modulated processes such as cell growth, migration and differentiation have high energy demands, and so it is perhaps not surprising that cell tension also regulates cellular metabolism2 — but exactly how has been unclear. Writing in Nature, Park et al.3 describe a mechanism by which stiffness in the extracellular matrix (ECM) around cells promotes the reorganization of a filamentous cellular protein called actin to enhance glycolysis, a key metabolic pathway that generates energy from glucose. The authors also show how changes in this pathway can lead to elevated glucose metabolism in lung tumours4.

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Nature 578, 517-518 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00314-y

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