Metabolic flux and flux balance analyses indicate the relevance of metabolic thermogenesis and aerobic glycolysis in cancer cells

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) regeneration by substrate-level phosphorylation is a general feature of cancer metabolism, even under normoxic conditions (aerobic glycolysis). However, it is unclear why cancer cells prefer inefficient aerobic glycolysis over the highly efficient process of oxidative phosphorylation for ATP regeneration. To investigate the metabolic principles underlying aerobic glycolysis, we performed 13C-metabolic flux analysis of 12 cultured cancer cell lines and explored the metabolic constraints required to reproduce the results using in silico metabolic simulations. We found that the measured flux distribution can be reproduced by maximizing the ATP consumption in the flux balance analysis considering a limitation of metabolic heat dissipation (enthalpy change). It suggests that aerobic glycolysis may be preferable because metabolic heat production during one mol of ATP regeneration by aerobic glycolysis was less than that produced by oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). Consistent with the simulation, OXPHOS inhibition induced metabolic redirection to aerobic glycolysis while maintaining the intracellular temperature. Furthermore, the dependency on aerobic glycolysis was partly alleviated upon culturing at low temperatures. Our data suggest that metabolic thermogenesis is an important factor in understanding aerobic glycolysis in cancer cells and that an advantage of aerobic glycolysis is the reduction in metabolic heat generation during ATP regeneration.