User:Peiyangium/sandbox/Glutamine Addiction

The metabolic profile of some types of cancer cell lines shows an unusually high demand of the amino acid of glutamine, without which the cells would not survive. This phenomenon is called 'glutamine addition' of cancel cells.

Principle
For human, glutamine is generally considered as a conditionally essential amino acid. In fact, it can be converted from glutamate via a glutamine synthetase dependent pathway inside the body. However, in the 1950's, people discovered that glutamine is critical to many cancer cell lines.

According to Warburg Effect, most cancers actually undergo high level of aerobic glycolysis, and the rate of glucose uptake is upregulated. Since glutamine can be converted from glucose, it is not intuitive for the cancer cells to have a high dependence on glutamine.

But in fact, glutamine addiction may be

Therapeutic Potentials
However, some recent studies challenge the indispensable role of exogenous glutamine on cancer cells. A study with glioblastoma cells and tumors showed that