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CANCER METABOLISM

Breast cancer has a new metabolic Achilles’ heel

Nature Metabolism volume 3, pages 590–592 (2021)Cite this article

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Cancer is a complex disease without a specific single origin. Despite recent advances in this field, knowledge of the relationship between the metabolic networks of tumoural cells and the normal cells from their tissue of origin is limited. Here, Mahendralingam et al., by using a combination of multi-omic and cell-based techniques to characterize the metabolic programs of normal mammary epithelial cells, find that mammary cancer cells preserve the metabolic network and vulnerabilities of their cells of origin, thus uncovering a new putative Achilles’ heel in breast cancer.

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Fig. 1: Mammary gland epithelial structure and technical approaches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Program of Tissue and Organ Homeostasis, Centro de Biologia Molecular “Severo Ochoa”, CSIC-UAM, Madrid, Spain

    Tatiana Alfonso-Pérez, Gabriel Baonza & Fernando Martin-Belmonte

Authors
  1. Tatiana Alfonso-Pérez
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  2. Gabriel Baonza
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  3. Fernando Martin-Belmonte
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Contributions

T.A.P., G.B. and F.M.B. wrote the manuscript. T.A.P. and G.B. designed the figure.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fernando Martin-Belmonte.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Alfonso-Pérez, T., Baonza, G. & Martin-Belmonte, F. Breast cancer has a new metabolic Achilles’ heel. Nat Metab 3, 590–592 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-021-00394-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-021-00394-8

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