Emerging Metabolic Regulation of Redox Status in Cancer Stem Cells Progression and Metastasis

Emerging research revealed a role of energy metabolism in maintaining stemness in cancer stem cells (CSCs). In CSCs, metabolic heterogeneity provides the flexibility to deal with endogenous mitochondrial stress and exogenous milieu. In metabolism, both the normal stem cells (SCs) and CSCs have increased glycolysis. CSCs not only increase metabolic activity, i.e., predominantly glycolysis for self-renewal, but also increase the antioxidant levels, i.e., low ROS levels, which maintains the stem cell fate. However, OXPHOS is also shown to increase in CSCs of few cancers. Traditionally, persistent metabolic ROS production causes oxidative damage, which accelerates cellular mortality. Thus, redox status control is critical for cellular activities. Hitherto, it has been unclear as how CSCs maintain low ROS levels and secondly, how ROS-dependent signaling pathways contribute to CSC activity is poorly understood? We focus on ROS-dependent cellular process in CSCs that regulates various metabolic signaling pathways and transcriptional activity.