%0 Journal Article
%T Natural Compounds as Regulators of the Cancer Cell Metabolism
%A Claudia Cerella
%A Flavia Radogna
%A Mario Dicato
%A Marc Diederich
%J International Journal of Cell Biology
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/639401
%X Even though altered metabolism is an ˇ°oldˇ± physiological mechanism, only recently its targeting became a therapeutically interesting strategy and by now it is considered an emerging hallmark of cancer. Nevertheless, a very poor number of compounds are under investigation as potential modulators of cell metabolism. Candidate agents should display selectivity of action towards cancer cells without side effects. This ideal favorable profile would perfectly overlap the requisites of new anticancer therapies and chemopreventive strategies as well. Nature represents a still largely unexplored source of bioactive molecules with a therapeutic potential. Many of these compounds have already been characterized for their multiple anticancer activities. Many of them are absorbed with the diet and therefore possess a known profile in terms of tolerability and bioavailability compared to newly synthetized chemical compounds. The discovery of important cross-talks between mediators of the most therapeutically targeted aberrancies in cancer (i.e., cell proliferation, survival, and migration) and the metabolic machinery allows to predict the possibility that many anticancer activities ascribed to a number of natural compounds may be due, in part, to their ability of modulating metabolic pathways. In this review, we attempt an overview of what is currently known about the potential of natural compounds as modulators of cancer cell metabolism. 1. (Re-)Evaluating the Targeting of Metabolic Alterations in Cancer Deregulated metabolism is one of the oldest mechanisms associated with cancer physiology. The actual meaning and the selective advantages induced by this deregulation remain nowadays still a matter of debate despite the pioneering work of Warburg about the impact of the alteration of the energetic metabolism in cancer cells. Certainly, several reasons have significantly contributed to delay the advancement in this area of investigation. For many years, the search for new anticancer therapeutic agents has been extremely focused on fighting the two most intuitive altered features of cancer cells, namely, their sustained and uncontrolled proliferation and their ability of evading death. Accordingly, we have assisted over the years in the development of different classes of therapeutic agents reducing cancer cell proliferation or inducing cancer cell death. The main target of these studies was the differential susceptibility of cancer versus normal cells to these treatments. Over the time, however, we have also learned about the limits of this approach considering the
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcb/2013/639401/