Oxygen-Starved Cancer Cells Languish without Aspartate

Deep inside tumors, where oxygen is scarce, cancer cells are reduced to scrounging metabolites from their surroundings. A particularly valuable metabolite happens to be aspartate. If oxygen-starved cancer cells can pick up aspartate, report scientists based at Rockefeller University, they survive, grow, and proliferate despite their suffocating conditions.The hunger for aspartate, the Rockefeller University scientists suggest, could be exploited in future cancer treatments. For example, treatmen