Metabolism of Proliferating Cells

An instructive example of the integration of multiple metabolic pathways covered in this book is to examine the metabolic needs of proliferating cells (e.g., T cells, stem cells, and cancer cells). A distinguishing feature of proliferating cells compared with nonproliferating cells (e.g., quiescent or differentiated cells) is the massive anabolism that proliferating cells undergo when they double their total biomass to subsequently divide into two daughter cells. Cell metabolism is reprogrammed to increase the uptake of nutrients that feed metabolic pathways to ultimately supply carbon, nitrogen, ATP, and NADPH for production of lipids, proteins, and nucleotides needed to build two daughter cells (Fig. 1). ATP and NADPH are necessary to drive many of the thermodynamically unfavorable anabolic reactions. ATP and NADPH also maintain housekeeping functions, such as maintenance of ion gradients across membranes and antioxidant capacity, respectively. In contrast, nonproliferating cells do not have an excessive need to conduct anabolic …