Figure 5. Cellular consequences followed by HSP40 binding to PKM2.

HSP40 interacts with PKM2, inhibits PKM2 protein level and pyruvate kinase activity. Consequently, glucose uptake from medium decreases and lactate consumption drops as well and mitochondrial oxygen respiration rate ascends at the same time. Interestingly, the transcriptional co-factor function of PKM2 was also impacted. As a result of all these cellular PKM2 functions change, the proliferation of tumor cells was impacted to some degree. Red arrows and dashed lines indicated a decrease and green arrow indicated an increase.