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Explore a selection of research case studies from the past five years.

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Researchers at the Crick are tackling the big questions about human health and disease, and new findings are published every week.

Our faculty have picked some of the most significant papers published by Crick scientists, all of which are freely available thanks to our open science policy.

Human breast cancer cells dying in hypoxia, shown in green.

Researchers target cancer’s ability to survive at low oxygen levels

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have shed light on how cancer cells survive in the first few hours after being cut off from a supply of oxygen. By studying how cancer cells use nutrients, the researchers found that, within three hours of the cells being deprived of oxygen, a process called glycolysis increases, with is independent of HIF1a. The rate of glycolysis was dependent on enzymes called LDHA and GOT1, suggesting that inhibiting these enzymes could target hard-to-read cancer cells in a tumour by stopping their ability to produce energy. This a promising avenue for treatment, especially because cells with a normal oxygen supply – including non-cancerous cells – wouldn't be affected to the same extent.

Metabolic priming by multiple enzyme systems supports glycolysis, HIF1α stabilisation, and human cancer cell survival in early hypoxia

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Published in The EMBO Journal

Published

Functional cross-talk between allosteric effects of activating and inhibiting ligands underlies PKM2 regulation

This work reveals that amino acids, rather than fructose 1,6-bisphosphate, are the relevant cellular regulators of pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2), a critical node in cancer metabolism. It further elucidates the molecular mechanism of PKM2 regulation by amino acids with a new algorithm that predicts allosteric pathways in proteins, a major and difficult problem in structural biology.

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Published in eLife

Published

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Research case studies 

Explore a selection of recent case studies that spotlight particular areas of research at the Crick.