Metabolomics in Cancer: Techniques, biomarkers, drug therapy and glucose metabolism

Carcinoma is a devastating illness that alters cellular metabolism and its surrounding environment. Metabolomics has the potential to detect hundreds to thousands of metabolites in biofluids and tissues that contain them; it is a fast evolving and very successful approach. Thanks to new metabolomics tools, researchers have been able to delve deeper into cancer metabolism and learn more about how cancer cells take advantage of glycolysis, or the "Warburg effect," to make lipids, amino acids, and nucleotides essential building blocks for tumour growth and vascularization. Metabolomics research is currently being used for a variety of purposes, such as discovering diagnostic biomarkers for cancer in the clinic, understanding the complex heterogeneous nature of cancer better, discovering pathways involved in cancer that could be utilised as new targets, and monitoring metabolic biomarkers during therapeutic intervention.  Metabolomic analysis of various metabolic profiles is a powerful and technically feasible tool that can be used to track the evolution of cancer metabolism and treatment response as the disease progresses. To date, a plethora of original research has highlighted the potential of metabolomics in several areas of research concerning tumour metabolic reprogramming. By providing valuable information on the cancer patient's reaction to medicinal procedures, these metabolomics methods may also offer hints to customised cancer treatments. Metabolomics provides the means to obtain this data. The aim of this work is to offer a brief overview of how metabolomic methods can clarify the effects of changes on the metabolic profile of a tumor.