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Mitochondrial Function and Dynamics during Malignant Transformation

A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Biochemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 May 2025 | Viewed by 1089

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Laboratory of Chemical Biology, National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Akadeemia tee 23, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia
Interests: cancer metabolism; breast cancer; colorectal cancer; metabolomic; mitochondria; OXPHOS; glycolysis; metabolic plasticity

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

One of the hallmarks of cancer is its ability to reprogram the metabolism to support the proliferation and metastatic activity of malignant cells. In cancer cells, mitochondria are integrated with specialized phosphotransfer circuits that distribute energy from the mitochondria to the intracellular compartments of ATP consumption sites. Phosphotransfer circuits for the delivery of ATP are composed of creatine kinase, adenylate kinase, nucleoside diphosphate kinases, and glycolytic/glucogenolytic enzymes, which act alongside associated mitochondrial substrate shuttles such as glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase/glycerol kinase. The mitochondria have a key role in the AMP signaling via the AK→ AMP→ AMPK pathway; they serve to control the cell cycle and proliferation of cancer cells. A high level of intracellular ATP will support malignant transformation and drive the formation of an aggressive cancer cell phenotype. Increased ATP production via the mitochondria increases the cell proliferation, stemness, anchorage independence, migration, invasion, metastasis, antioxidant capacity, and drug resistance of cancer cells. In cancer cells, the mitochondria move with cells to areas of high energetic need in order to support the migration of cancer cells. For this Special Issue, we invite the submission of manuscripts (both reviews and articles) that detail how OXPHOS interacts with glycolysis; we hope to provide new insights into the metabolic plasticity of cancer cells.

Dr. Aleksandr Klepinin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • AMPK
  • phosphotransfer network
  • mitochondria
  • cancer metabolism
  • glycolysis
  • metabolic plasticity
  • cancer cell migration
  • molecular oncology
  • cancer treatment strategy

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

17 pages, 1358 KiB  
Article
Density Gradient Centrifugation Is an Effective Tool to Isolate Cancer Stem-like Cells from Hypoxic and Normoxia Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Models
by Camillo Sargiacomo and Aleksandr Klepinin
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2024, 25(16), 8958; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms25168958 - 17 Aug 2024
Viewed by 887
Abstract
Accumulating evidence has indicated that stemness-related genes are associated with the aggressiveness of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Because no universal markers for breast CSCs are available, we applied the density gradient centrifugation method to enrich breast CSCs. We demonstrated that the density centrifugation [...] Read more.
Accumulating evidence has indicated that stemness-related genes are associated with the aggressiveness of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Because no universal markers for breast CSCs are available, we applied the density gradient centrifugation method to enrich breast CSCs. We demonstrated that the density centrifugation method allows for the isolation of cancer stem cells (CSCs) from adherent and non-adherent MCF7 (Luminal A), MDA-MB-231 (TNBC) and MDA-MB-468 (TNBC) breast cancer cells. The current study shows that the CSCs’ enriched fraction from Luminal A and TNBC cells have an increased capacity to grow anchorage-independently. CSCs from adherent TNBC are mainly characterized by metabolic plasticity, whereas CSCs from Luminal A have an increased mitochondrial capacity. Moreover, we found that non-adherent growth CSCs isolated from large mammospheres have a higher ability to grow anchorage-independently compared to CSCs isolated from small mammospheres. In CSCs, a metabolic shift towards glycolysis was observed due to the hypoxic environment of the large mammosphere. Using a bioinformatic analysis, we indicate that hypoxia HYOU1 gene overexpression is associated with the aggressiveness, metastasis and poor prognosis of TNBC. An in vitro study demonstrated that HYOU1 overexpression increases breast cancer cells’ stemness and hyperactivates their metabolic activity. In conclusion, we show that density gradient centrifugation is a non-marker-based approach to isolate metabolically flexible (normoxia) CSCs and glycolytic (hypoxic) CSCs from aggressive TNBC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mitochondrial Function and Dynamics during Malignant Transformation)
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