Leukemia Cells Metabolize Fat to Avoid Cell Death

Leukemia cells, like most cancers, are addicted to glucose to generate their energy, but new research shows for the first time that these cells also rely on fatty acid metabolism to grow and to evade cell death.
Research has shown that Leukemia cells like fat and make it hard to kill the Leukemia cells. This research also shows that shutting off fat oxidation makes the cells vulnerable to self-destruction. With this fat oxidation may become a way to treat Leukemia patiences.
In non-cancerous cells the processing of fatty acids leads to production of ATP, which is a source of energry for the cell. The researchers shows that fatty acid oxidation in leukemia cell mitochondria drives cellular oxygen consumption and inhibits the activity of proteins that are vital to apoptosis, the programmed death of defective cells that begins in the mitochondria.
With this finds that may have been the reason why Leukemia cells were not dying, because they were living off the fatty acids.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127152458.htm