The Warburg effect is defined by an increased utilization of glucose via glycolysis as a cellular resource, and is a common phenotype of cancerous cells.
The characteristic enhanced glucose uptake observed in cancer cells has been used to detect and image cancers via PET detection of 2-18F-2-deoxyglucose, which preferentially concentrates within tumors as a result of their rapid uptake of glucose. Although normal cells require growth factor signaling to utilize available resources for anything more than preservation, cancer cells often display dysregulated metabolism and freely take advantage of the abundant resources available within the body. Breaking these resources down via glycolysis and glutaminolysis is more to feed and protect the cell as it grows than provide energy to maintain cellular functions. Intermediates produced through glycolysis and glutaminolysis are diverted to biosynthetic pathways that are necessary to produce the basic building blocks of cellular growth. Carbon and nitrogen from glucose and glutamine fuel nucleoside and amino-acid synthesis, whereas pyruvate feeds the citric acid cycle supporting continued fatty acid synthesis by supplying acetyl- and malonyl-CoA. The metabolic changes, such as the Warburg effect, observed in cancer allow readily available resources to be converted into biomass in an efficient manner. This metabolic shift releases cells from the typical restraints on growth, and provides a potential way to distinguish them from healthy cells – allowing for treatments that may be selective for cancerous cells. In addition, there are many links between cancer metabolism and drug resistance and compounds that influence dysregulated cellular metabolism often have the ability to increase the effect or reduce resistance to current anticancer treatments.