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Colorectal tumors with mutated KRAS and APC require the amino acid transporter SLC7A5 to drive tumorigenesis. Mechanistically, SLC7A5 drives transcriptional and metabolic reprogramming by maintaining intracellular amino acid levels, leading to enhanced protein synthesis.

Treating malignant pleural mesothelioma (MpM) is challenging due to a lack of druggable genes, but other molecular features could be clinically useful. Here the authors profile mRNA translation dysregulation in MpM cell lines using polysome profiling, and identify mTORC1 and 2 as potential pharmacological targets.

Kiourtis et al. show that liver senescence triggers senescence and dysfunction in other organs through TGFβ secretion from the liver.

The oncogenic potential of pks⁺ Escherichia coli depends critically on bacterial adhesion to host epithelial cells mediated by the type 1 pilus adhesin FimH and the F9 pilus adhesin FmlH.

Glutamine synthetase is the only enzyme that synthesizes glutamine in mammals. In vivo metabolomics showed that glutamine synthetase utilizes methylamine to produce N⁵-methylglutamine, whose levels correlate with tumor burden in a β+catenin+mutant liver cancer model.

The role of folate metabolism in leukemic stem cells remains understudied. Here, the authors show that inhibition of mitochondrial folate metabolism leads to differentiation of leukemic cells through depletion of purines and suppression of mTORC1.

Gammage and colleagues find that mitochondrial DNA mutations induce alterations in redox metabolism, a remodeled tumor microenvironment characterized by a loss of neutrophils and consequently enhanced responses to immunotherapy in melanoma.

The persistence of leukemic stem cells (LSCs) is known to limit the success of imatinib in patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). Here, the authors identify a reliance of these persisting LSCs on pyruvate carboxylase mediated pyruvate anaplerosis for survival after imatinib and demonstrate the therapeutic efficacy of targeting this using an inhibitor of mitochondrial pyruvate carrier.

Mannose is present at trace levels in blood and regulates cancer growth. Here the authors show that supraphysiological levels of mannose can also regulate macrophages, limiting their production of IL-1β and increasing resistance of mice to LPS-induced endotoxemia and DSS-induced colitis.

Some p53 mutants promote invasive migration of cancer cells and metastasis of tumours in vivo. However the key mechanistic details behind these phenomena remain unclear. Here the authors propose a non-cell autonomous mechanism involving fibroblasts, whereby mutant p53-expressing cancer cells activate an exosome-mediated mechanism that influences integrin recycling in fibroblasts, thus influencing extracellular matrix remodelling to favour cancer cell invasion and migration.

Targeting extracellular matrix (ECM) remodelling is a feasible avenue to prevent cancer aggressiveness and metastasis. In this study, Kay et al. show that metabolic flux in cancer-associated fibroblasts is coupled to enhanced proline synthesis by PYCR1 to support elevated production of collagen-rich ECM, thus contributing to cancer spreading.

Glutamine metabolism is well known to support tumour growth. Here the authors show that cancer cells also utilize glutamine to promote invasiveness by converting it to glutamate, which upon secretion activates metabotropic glutamate receptors to stimulate matrix metalloproteases recycling to the cell surface.

In differentiating cells, ERK activation shifts from transient to sustained. Quantitative proteomics reveals that, during differentiation, dynamic changes in ERK-interacting proteins regulate the pathway at several levels and by different mechanisms, suggesting a distributed control mechanism for the ERK pathway.

In this study, Vande Voorde et al. investigate the potential of untargeted metabolomics as a stratification tool for colorectal cancer (CRC). They present a comprehensive pipeline to uncover metabolic vulnerabilities in CRC based on its genetic origin. With this approach, they show perturbations in methionine metabolism linked to APC deficiency, and identify adenosylhomocysteinase as an actionable therapeutic target.

Androgen receptor (AR) signalling regulates cellular metabolism in prostate cancer. Here, the authors perform a proteomics and metabolomics characterisation of prostate cancer cells adapted to long-term resistance to AR inhibition and show rewiring of glucose and lipid metabolism, and further identify a signature associated with resistance to AR inhibition.

Serine catabolism to formate supplies one-carbon units for biosynthesis. Here the authors show that formate production in murine cancers with high oxidative metabolism exceeds the biosynthetic demand and that high formate levels promotes invasion of cancer cells.

Formaldehyde is known to react with nucleophilic amino acids in solution but its in vivo nonenzymatic reactivity is poorly understood. Here LC/MS and isotopic labeling studies suggest nonenzymatic formaldehyde metabolism may occur in living mice through the direct reactivity of formaldehyde with amino acids, including a possible role of timonacic, a product of formaldehyde and cysteine, as a reservoir.