Control of Fatty Acid Oxidation by the Sympathetic Nervous System in the Diabetic Heart: Implications for Both Heart Failure and Cancer | Chapter 1 | Current Innovations in Medicine and Medical Science Vol. 2

 Both diabetic cardiomyopathy and cancer are diseases that can be understood from an evolutionary perspective as maladaptive responses of tissues or organs to changes in the local environment. Diabetic cardiomyopathy is an example of diabetes, a stressor that causes adaptive to maladaptive phenotypic changes and thereby impairs function. Cancer represents a maladaptive re-expression of ancient pre-programmed traits that evolved hundreds of millions of years before multicellularity emerged. This trait shares many common pathways with the maladaptive phenotypes of heart failure and diabetes, many of which are in metabolic pathways. However, some of these may be in the β-adrenergic signaling pathway. Restoring the phenotype is the goal of therapy, and there is an opportunity to apply therapeutic insights from one disease to another. Carnitine palmitoyltransferase-1 (CPT-1) offers such a possibility. Our study of CPT-1 in diabetic hearts has provided many new insights into the complex interplay between CPT-1 regulation and β-adrenergic signaling. In cancer, CPT-1 has emerged as a prognostic marker and therapeutic target for many cancers, including breast, prostate and colon cancers. Other new aspects of CPT-1 regulation have emerged from the oncology field. It is now known that splice variants of CPT-1A exist that translocate to the cell nucleus and function as epigenetic regulators. Therefore, the signaling networks elucidated in the diabetic heart may also find new therapeutic value in cancer. The human body cannot live without energy. By understanding the flow of energy and how to disrupt that flow, many effective and powerful treatments can be found for years to come.

Author(s) Details:

Vijay Sharma,
Department of Cellular Pathology, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, England and Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology and Institute of Life Course and Clinical Sciences, University of Liverpool, England.

John H. McNeill,
Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Please see the link here: https://stm.bookpi.org/CIMMS-V2/article/view/8214