Researchers have revealed how a channel that controls cellular potassium levels causes metabolic rewiring in breast cancer cells, promoting tumour growth.
and now appearing as the final version, was described by the editors as providing convincing evidence that an intracellular subpopulation of a specific potassium channel reprograms breast cancer cells towards the Warburg phenotype, one of the metabolic hallmarks of cancer.
To close this gap in knowledge, the multidisciplinary research team used BKCa-proficient and deficient human cancer cell lines, as well as cancer cells from mice lacking BKCa to study the role of different BKCa subpopulations in cancer cell metabolism and growth. They found that breast cancer cells lacking BKCa had lower intracellular calcium levels.
Having found that BKCa helps cancer cells with reprogramming their metabolism, Dr. Bischof, first author of the study, specifically looked for evidence of the Warburg effect by measuring lactate concentrations over time; higher levels of lactate secretion imply a shift towards metabolism that does not use oxygen. As expected, the presence of BKCa not only increased lactate secretion, but also increased the ability of breast cancer cells to grow without oxygen.
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