{"id":224718,"date":"2025-11-07T20:04:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T02:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/acetate-from-tumor-associated-macrophages-fuels-liver-cancer-metastasis"},"modified":"2025-11-07T20:04:55","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T02:04:55","slug":"acetate-from-tumor-associated-macrophages-fuels-liver-cancer-metastasis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/acetate-from-tumor-associated-macrophages-fuels-liver-cancer-metastasis","title":{"rendered":"Acetate from tumor-associated macrophages fuels liver cancer metastasis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/acetate-from-tumor-associated-macrophages-fuels-liver-cancer-metastasis2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/The\">@The<\/a> researchers have revealed a mechanism that triggers metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)\u2014the most common type of primary liver cancer\u2014through the production of acetate by tumor-associated macrophages.<\/p>\n<p>Acetate is important to cancer metastasis because it promotes the synthesis of acetyl-coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA), which is a pivotal metabolic intermediate in the catabolism of glucose, lipids, and amino acids, as well as the biosynthesis of lipids and the TCA cycle. Acetyl-CoA also functions as a signaling molecule due to its role in lysine acetylation. Increased acetyl-CoA production is characteristic of metastatic cancers.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers have known that acetate levels in the blood are significantly lower than in cancer tissues, suggesting the presence of acetate-producing cells within the cancer microenvironment. However, the exact source of acetate in the cancer microenvironment was previously unclear.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers have now identified a key acetate source by revealing how HCC cells trigger acetate secretion by tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) through a metabolic interaction involving lactate and the lipid peroxidation\u2013aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) pathway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>@The researchers have revealed a mechanism that triggers metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)\u2014the most common type of primary liver cancer\u2014through the production of acetate by tumor-associated macrophages. Acetate is important to cancer metastasis because it promotes the synthesis of acetyl-coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA), which is a pivotal metabolic intermediate in the catabolism of glucose, lipids, and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}