Figure 9.

Metabolic adaptation in breast cancer tissues and their impact on therapy response. The individual differences in cellular metabolic phenotype contribute to tissue heterogeneity in the tissue microenvironment. The schematic figure summarises the examined elements of metabolic adaption and the detected different metabolic subtypes in the studied breast cancer cells (cells with high metabolic plasticity: high mTOR activity and high expression of at least two other studied metabolic enzymes; cells with no or low metabolic plasticity: low mTOR activity or high mTOR activity and high expression of only one studied metabolic enzyme). LDHA (lactate dehydrogenase A) is involved in glycolysis, GLS (glutaminase) is involved in glutaminolysis, and FASN (fatty acid synthase) and CPT1A (carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A) are involved in lipid metabolism.