Does anaerobic glycolysis lead to the malignant phenotype?
Computer simulation of growth and spread of a tumoral lesion through successive accumulation of clones that enable anaerobic glycolisis (brown) and anaerobic glycolysis plus resistance to acidosis (green), from an original mildly aggressive clone (white areas inside thick red contour). The red contour denotes the boundary between the tumor lesion and the surrounding healthy tissue. Black contours denote highly necrotic regions within the tumoral lesion. The processes modeled include hypoxia, the hypoxia-induced mutations leading to the development of a new clone (brown) that is capable to perform anaerobic glycolysis, the resulting production of an acidic environment and death of all clones from acidosis, and further mutations that lead to a clone (green) that is capable to resist acidosis. This clone rapidly takes over the morphology. The overall simulated time if of the order of one year. The final size of the lesion is several millimeters. Ongoing angiogenesis is also simulated (pin
