Malignant cells reprogram metabolic pathways to meet the demands of growth and proliferation. These altered manners of metabolism are now identified as hallmarks of cancer. Studies have revealed tumor cells alter specific pathways such as glycolysis, fatty acid synthesis and amino acid synthesis to support their proliferation. In this review, we provide a theoretical framework to understand metabolic reprogramming and the mechanisms accompanying distorted metabolism to tumor progression. How these alterations will be assisting in cancer diagnostics and advances in standard techniques in marker identification and imagining are also discussed.
Keywords: Biochemistry; Cancer; Cancer research; Cell differentiation; DOPA; Imaging; MRI; Medical imaging; Metabolic pathway; Metabolomics; Nuclear medicine; PET; SPECT.
© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.