Brain cancer: Hunger for amino acids makes it more aggressive
To fuel phases of fast and aggressive growth, tumors need higher-than-normal amounts of energy and the molecular building blocks needed to build new cellular components. Cancer cells therefore consume a lot of sugar (glucose A number of tumors are also able to catabolize the amino acid glutamine, an important building block of proteins. A key enzyme in amino acid decomposition is isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH)…