The Flick of a Switch: Conferring Survival Advantage to Breast Cancer Stem Cells Through Metabolic Plasticity

Within heterogeneous tumors, cancer stem cell (CSC) populations exhibit the greatest tumor initiation potential, promote metastasis, and contribute to therapy resistance. For breast cancer specifically, CSCs are identified by CD44(high)CD24(low) cell surface marker expression and increased aldehyde dehydrogenase activity. In general, bulk breast tumor cells possess altered energetics characterized by aerobic glycolysis. In contrast, breast CSCs appear to have adaptive metabolic plasticity that allows these tumor-initiating cells to switch between glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation, depending on factors present in the tumor microenvironment (e.g., hypoxia, reactive oxygen species, availability of glucose). In this article, we review the regulatory molecules that may facilitate the metabolic plasticity of breast CSCs. These regulatory factors include epigenetic chromatin modifiers, non-coding RNAs, transcriptional repressors, transcription factors, energy and stress sensors, and metabolic enzymes. Furthermore, breast cancer cells acquire CSC-like characteristics and altered energetics by undergoing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). This energy costly process is paired with reprogrammed glucose metabolism by epigenetic modifiers that regulate expression of both EMT and other metabolism-regulating genes. The survival advantage imparted to breast CSCs by metabolic plasticity suggests that targeting the factors that mediate the energetic switch should hinder tumorigenesis and lead to improved patient outcomes.