20/01/2023
In 1924, Otto Warburg published a paper on the metabolism of cancer cells in Naturwissenschaften. In it, he asked “How does the metabolism of a growing tissue differ from that of a non-growing tissue?” [1]. In this paper, Warburg demonstrated in vitro [1] and 3 years later in vivo [2] that cancer cells reprogramme their metabolism. Key features of this metabolic reprogramming are that cancer cells take up more glucose and synthesise more lactate in the presence of oxygen than non-growing cells and organs. Ephraim Racker later termed such aerobic glycolysis the “Warburg effect” to contrast it with the “Pasteur effect,” which is anaerobic glycolysis