{"id":239200,"date":"2026-06-18T02:06:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T07:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/colorectal-tumors-use-mitochondrial-complex-ii-to-stockpile-iron-but-eliminating-it-causes-cell-death"},"modified":"2026-06-18T02:06:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T07:06:32","slug":"colorectal-tumors-use-mitochondrial-complex-ii-to-stockpile-iron-but-eliminating-it-causes-cell-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/colorectal-tumors-use-mitochondrial-complex-ii-to-stockpile-iron-but-eliminating-it-causes-cell-death","title":{"rendered":"Colorectal tumors use mitochondrial complex II to stockpile iron, but eliminating it causes cell death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/colorectal-tumors-use-mitochondrial-complex-ii-to-stockpile-iron-but-eliminating-it-causes-cell-death.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists know that colorectal cancer cells require large amounts of iron and that as cancer becomes more aggressive, the cells have even higher amounts of iron. Normal cells with high levels of iron would undergo a type of iron-related cell death called ferroptosis. But in cancer cells, the iron continues to accumulate well beyond normal levels without succumbing to expected cell death processes.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers from the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center have now discovered a key metabolic pathway that allows colorectal cancer cells to accumulate large quantities of iron. Blocking that pathway reduced iron levels and caused the cancer cells to die.<\/p>\n<p>In this new study, <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S1550413126001853\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Cell Metabolism<\/i>, researchers started by looking at the known pathways involved in ferroptosis, assuming something in this process was awry. But knocking out these typical ferroptotic enzymes had no impact on tumor growth. So they dug deeper into mitochondrial metabolism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists know that colorectal cancer cells require large amounts of iron and that as cancer becomes more aggressive, the cells have even higher amounts of iron. Normal cells with high levels of iron would undergo a type of iron-related cell death called ferroptosis. But in cancer cells, the iron continues to accumulate well beyond normal [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239200","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=239200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}