The metabolic features of many diseases have a striking overlap with cancer.
The metabolism of diseases is an interconnected network.
Connecting of cancer metabolism to the broader context of aberrant metabolism is necessary and may reveal new therapeutic strategies.
It is important to know whether a potential cancer therapeutic target has been already established in other diseases.
Over the past decade, knowledge of cancer metabolism has expanded exponentially and has provided several clinically relevant targets for cancer therapy. Although these current approaches have shown promise, there are very few studies showing how seemingly unrelated metabolic processes in other diseases can readily occur in cancer. Moreover, the striking metabolic overlap between cancer and other diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular, neurological, obesity, and aging has provided key therapeutic strategies that have even begun to be translated into clinical trials. These promising results necessitate consideration of the interconnected metabolic network while studying the metabolism of cancer. This review article discusses how cancer metabolism is intertwined with systemic metabolism and how knowledge from other diseases can help to broaden therapeutic opportunities for cancer.
