Molecular aspects of the warburg effect

Abstract

The Warburg effect is a quality of cancer cells which is so defining of them that it is considered an important emerging hallmark of disease. Discovered by Dr. Otto Warburg in the 1920s, it was not until the last decade that the importance of this phenomenon was more widely realised and exploited in medical research, and its future possibilities conceived, largely due to an increase in our understanding of cellular metabolism. The Warburg effect itself is an observed change in the metabolism of cancer cells, where they metabolise a much larger amount of glucose than normal cells, utilising aerobic glycolysis rather than oxidative phosphorylation. While aerobic glycolysis creates less ATP ene..