Sirtuins and cellular metabolism in cancers

Abstract We know that metabolic dysregulations in cellular metabolism including aerobic glycolysis, oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS), lipid metabolism, nucleotide metabolism, and amino acid metabolism are commonly hallmarks of cancers. Sirtuins, which are located in the nucleus, cellular plasma, or mitochondrion, are shown to widely participate in the modulation of cellular metabolism, the alterations of which may contribute to tumor initiation and progression. Therefore increasing evidence has confirmed the pivotal roles of sirtuins in cancers with regard to their capacities to reprogram metabolism. As chemical modification erasers, sirtuins not only epigenetically regulate the transcription of target metabolic genes and their major regulators by deacetylating histones, but also regulate the posttranslational activities of them via erasing modifications, such as deacetylation, deacylation, and so on, which affect their substrates’ enzymatic activity, protein stability, or translocations. These kinds of modifications introduced by sirtuins family are important for tumorigenesis and cancer development, and may provide clues for their promising clinical applications in cancer therapeutics.