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REVIEW article

Front. Mol. Biosci.
Sec. Metabolomics
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2024.1499104
This article is part of the Research Topic The Role of Cell Metabolism in Development, Drug Resistance, and Survival Assessment in Cancer View all articles

Review of Cancer Cell Volatile Organic Compounds: their Metabolism and Evolution

Provisionally accepted
Takeshi Furuhashi Takeshi Furuhashi 1*Kanako Toda Kanako Toda 2Wolfram Weckwerth Wolfram Weckwerth 3
  • 1 National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
  • 2 Saitama Prefectural University, Koshigaya, Japan
  • 3 Vienna Metabolomics Center, Department of Ecogenomics and Systems Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, Austria

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Cancer is ranked as the top cause of premature mortality. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are produced from catalytic peroxidation by reactive oxygen species (ROS) and have become a highly attractive non-invasive cancer screening approach. For future clinical applications, however, the correlation between cancer hallmarks and cancer-specific VOCs requires further study. This review discusses and compares cellular metabolism, signal transduction as well as mitochondrial metabolite translocation in view of cancer evolution and the basic biology of VOCs production. Certain cancerous characteristics as well as the origin of the ROS removal system date back to procaryotes and early eukaryotes and share commonalities with non-cancerous proliferative cells. This calls for future studies on metabolic cross talks and regulation of the VOCs production pathway.

    Keywords: cancer evolution, Cellular metabolism, Lipid Peroxidation, multifunctional enzyme, ROS, VOCs (volatile organic compounds)

    Received: 20 Sep 2024; Accepted: 18 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Furuhashi, Toda and Weckwerth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Takeshi Furuhashi, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 119077, Singapore

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.