Why Cancer & Metabolism? Why now?

At the organismal level, the clinical association of obesity with increased cancer risk, the classic observations that caloric restriction can inhibit carcinogenesis in rodent models, and experimental models that suggest that the behavior of a subset of cancers is influenced by drugs such as metformin, that may act at least in part by perturbing whole organism energy metabolism, further tie altered metabolic states with tumorigenesis and cancer progression. Improvements in metabolic imaging have also provided new glimpses of in vivo real-time metabolic changes. Both hyperpolarized 13C MRI and new positron emission tomography (PET) radiolabeled ligands provide remarkable insights into tumor metabolism in vivo. The journal Cancer & Metabolism provides a timely forum to report progress in cancer research spanning the entire spectrum including cell metabolism, metabolic imaging, whole organism metabolism, circadian influences on metabolism, and clinical studies.Why Cancer & Metabolism now? It is a journal overseen by practicing scientists for scientists, to offer a rapid means to communicate research findings in this booming field. The journal aims for rapid turn around and minimal revisions limited only to those that may be required to substantively support the major conclusions drawn in the title and abstract of the paper. The journal will also provide timely critical reviews in areas of this rapidly changing field. All articles will be published online and open access soon after acceptance, thus providing a rapidly growing forum for significant research. A brief history of the field below will underscore what has brought us to this point, as well as our predictions for this exciting, turbulent area of research.The discoveries of major metabolic pathways decades ago by notables, such as Krebs, Warburg, Embden, Myerhof, Kennedy, and others, laid the foundation for the use of experimental methods to study the metabolism of cancer. Otto Warburg has remained to date as th