Preface

Excerpt

It has almost been a century since the Nobel Laureate, Otto Warburg, first described the phenomenon of aerobic glycolysis in cancers that he, at that time, postulated would result in acid-base imbalances. In the 1960s, buoyed by the ability to grow cells in culture for prolonged periods of time, a desire to optimize culture conditions led to the first investigations into the relationship between metabolism, acid-base chemistry, and proliferation. Harry Eagle defined many of the medium and culture conditions for various established cell lines and, from 1969 to 1973, focused almost exclusively in pH optima for growth, with the observation that transformed cells generally had lower pH optima than did their normal counterparts. However, cancer metabolism investigators were soon distracted from metabolism to genomic studies with the advent of new molecular biology tools. In 1976, the famous cancer biologist Sidney Weinhouse was reflecting on this when he said: “Since our perspectives have broadened over the years, the burning issues of glycolysis and respiration in cancer now flicker only dimly”. However, despite these scientific headwinds, a number of investigators maintained their interests in cancer metabolism, many using the new tools of molecular biology. Further, in the last few decades, tools have been developed with which to interrogate metabolism and the acid/base balance of tumors in vivo. …