Don’t mention the Warburg: finding cancer’s sweet spot

What’s going on in the body when we have cancer? The standard definition is that healthy cells mutate and grow rapidly. As the abnormal cells cluster, they form a tumor, which can spread to other parts of the body—and this gets treated with chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery.

It’s a description that leaves a lot unanswered. Why, for instance, do cells mutate in the first place? And how can cancer cells grow far more quickly than healthy cells? The questions aren’t trivial; if we could answer them, we would know how to prevent cancer and treat it without destroying the immune system in the process.

Several new theories have emerged that could answer these questions—and both see sugar as playing a key role in the cause and development of cancer.