Compositions and methods for glucose transport inhibition

Abstract

Glucose deprivation is an attractive strategy in cancer research and treatment. Cancer cells upregulate glucose uptake and metabolism for maintaining accelerated growth and proliferation rates. Specifically blocking these processes is likely to provide new insights to the role of glucose transport and metabolism in tumorigenesis, as well as in apoptosis. As solid tumors outgrow the surrounding vasculature, they encounter microenvironments with a limited supply of nutrients leading to a glucose deprived environment in some regions of the tumor. Cancer cells living in the glucose deprived environment undergo changes to prevent glucose deprivation-induced apoptosis. Knowing how cancer cells evade apoptosis induction is also likely to yield valuable information and knowledge of how to overcome the resistance to apoptosis induction in cancer cells. Disclosed herein are novel anticancer compounds that inhibit basal glucose transport, resulting in tumor suppression and new methods for the study of glucose deprivation in animal cancer research.