According to the World Cancer Report 2014, cancer accounted for 14.6% of all human deaths in 2012, equal to 8.2 million lives.

If considered as a single entity, cancer has become the second biggest cause of mortality worldwide.

Costs of cancer treatment are spiralling with increasing demands that are placed on the health-care budgets of all countries.

Cancer cells have a very different metabolism from that of normal cells from which they are derived.

Their metabolism is elevated, which allows them to sustain higher proliferative rate and resist some cell death signals.

Inhibition of key enzymes in glycolysis and glutaminolysis pathways with small molecules has provided a novel but emerging area of cancer research and has been proven effective in slowing the proliferation of cancer cells, with several inhibitors being in clinical trials.

This review paper covers recent advances in the development of chemotherapeutic agents against several metabolic targets for cancer therapy, including glucose transporters, hexokinase, pyruvate kinase M2, glutaminase, and isocitrate dehydrogenase.

Source: Bentham Science Publishers