20/01/2023
Most but not all healthy and cancerous proliferating cells take up more glucose as well as synthesise more lactate in the presence of oxygen than non-proliferating cells [4, 5]. Otto Warburg hypothesised that this was because of a mitochondrial defect causing cancer cells to rely on glycolysis for ATP resynthesis [6]. However, many cancers have functioning mitochondria [7] and thus a defective oxidative phosphorylation does not generally explain increased glycolytic flux in cancer.