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A century of the Warburg effect

In 1923, Otto Warburg published his landmark study, in which he described his seminal observations related to metabolic shifts in cancer, often referred to as the Warburg effect. His work laid the foundation for an understanding of how metabolic reconfiguration contributes to cancer onset and progression. Several researchers in the field share their thoughts on what this discovery means to them and how it has inspired their scientific journey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

    Craig B. Thompson & Lydia W. S. Finley

  2. The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK

    Karen H. Vousden

  3. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Randall S. Johnson

  4. Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Randall S. Johnson

  5. ETH, Zürich, Switzerland

    Willem H. Koppenol

  6. Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, Faculty of Medicine, Heinrich-Heine-University-Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Helmut Sies

  7. The First Affiliated Hospital and Institute of Translational Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Zhimin Lu

  8. University of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Cluster of Excellence Cellular Stress Responses in Aging-associated Diseases (CECAD), Cologne, Germany

    Christian Frezza

  9. Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jiyeon Kim

  10. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Zeping Hu

  11. Smilow Center for Translational Research, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Caroline R. Bartman

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  1. Craig B. Thompson
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  7. Lydia W. S. Finley
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to
Craig B. Thompson, Karen H. Vousden, Randall S. Johnson, Willem H. Koppenol, Helmut Sies, Zhimin Lu, Lydia W. S. Finley, Christian Frezza, Jiyeon Kim, Zeping Hu or Caroline R. Bartman.

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Thompson, C.B., Vousden, K.H., Johnson, R.S. et al. A century of the Warburg effect.
Nat Metab 5, 1840–1843 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-023-00927-3

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  • Published: 21 November 2023

  • Issue Date: November 2023

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-023-00927-3

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