Metabolic Warburg effect reprogramming, immune-checkpoint, targeted therapy-signal transduction and personalized therapy in tumor cells

Submission Deadline: 31 July 2025 View: 34 Submit to Special Issue

Guest Editors

Prof. Cheorl-Ho Kim

E-mail: chkimbio@skku.edu  

Affiliation:

1. Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoburo 2066, Suwon 16419, Korea.

2. Samsung Advanced Institute of Health Science and Technology (SAIHST), Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul 06351, Korea.

Homepage:

Research Interests: Tumor Cells; Cancer Research; Warburg Effect; Metabolic Control; Reprogramming Cancers; Molecular Research; Metabolic Reprogramming; Immune-checkpoint

Summary

Warburg effect as a characteristic metabolic activity represents a phenotypical dominant property of tumor cells. Growing tumor cells are not always restricted to a single metabolic pathway, but dual glycolysis and OXPHOS pathways can be mixed. Thus, tumor cells can be targeted to control the mitochondrial metabolism and proliferation by custom- or metabolism-dependent therapies based on the glycolysis and OXPHOS phenotypes. Mitochondria are also attracted for promising tumor therapeutic targets and mitochondrial metabolism has been lighted in tumor therapy. However, a shift event appears from aerobic glycolysis to OXPHOS in tumor cells, calling the shift to “metabolic reprogramming” as referred to the reverse Warburg effect, which induces drug resistance against tumor therapeutics. Global personalization implies targeted therapy, individualized therapy, personalized therapy, and tailored therapy. Thus, predictive therapy Selection of patients who will benefit from therapy is a key issue in precision medicine. The old paradigm has shifted from toxic and non-selective chemotherapeutic drugs to integration drugs of molecular diagnostics with targeted therapies for individualized cancer care.

In this view, mitochondrial metabolism is emphasized to selectively target tumor cells as a strategy. Therefore, we view our points of the metabolic targets of tumor mitochondria for tumor therapeutics. The present Special Issue deals with unsatisfied answers to the Warburg effect-based anti-tumor agents from previous reports on Warburg effects, overlooking the current relevance of metabolic reprogramming in tumor therapy. In addition, we expand this to immune-checkpoint inhibitors such as PD-1 and CTLA-4 as well as Antibody-drug conjugates to overview the current anti-cancer therapies. T-cell mediated immunity is fine-tuned by stimulatory & inhibitory signals, Immune-modulating agents as in Anti-Cancer Drugs (Targeted therapy-signal transduction), and neo-adjuvant chemotherapy as chemotherapeutic agents. Such current studies include: 1) Cancer Growth via autocrine growth loop is associated with oncogenes: RAS, EGFR, HER2, C-KIT, ALK, and ABL. 2) Angiogenesis via angiogenic switch is associated with angiogenic factors: VEGF, VEGFR, and PDGFR. 3) Tumor Immunity via immune checkpoint Induction is associated with CTLA-4, PD-1, PDL-1 and PDL-2. 4) Tumor-targeting therapeutics are fit to the Warburg glycolysis pathway. 5) Metabolic switching from glycolysis to OXPHOS, cytosolic to mitochondrial shift, in tumor cells. 6) The tumor-attenuated metabolic enzyme targets are emerging.

The thematic issue has been designed for the biology and therapeutic viewpoints with the smart title of the personalized treatment for human cancer, as in the outline view of the issue. The issue will receive the current status of the tumor patients in clinical points with the past, present, and future classification of patients. Due to the many different types and diversity of solid and leukemia at patient levels, personalized therapeutic approaches and trials become important in clinics. Therefore, we will deal with the recently personalized therapy written in the development of personalized molecular therapy for human cancer. The human cancer molecular targets are being searched and found with the purpose of molecular signaling disruption. The global Omics approaches for the proteomic, phosphoproteomic, glycoproteomic, and lipidomic analysis will give many merits for the targets as human cancer diversity-used biomarkers. Post-translational profiling in human cancers including phosphorylation, glycosylation, signaling, and quantitative proteomics for identification of new biomarkers in human cancer patients. Also, the practical considerations for Omics experiments will be shared with biomedical sciences. During the treatment of anti-cancer drugs, the drug delivery system is crucial for the drug efficacy and toxicological side effects including ADME.   

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