The metabolic significance of ATP-citrate lyase in cancer: insights into glutamine-fuelled citrate biosynthesis and tumour progression.

ATP-citrate lyase (ACLY) is a major metabolic enzyme involved in the citrate to acetyl-CoA conversion, connecting glycolysis with lipid biosynthesis. More evidence has been given for its cancer metabolic role, but its patterns of expression and prognostic value in various cancers remain unclear, particularly in the process of cancer metabolic reprogramming, a feature of cancer progression and drug resistance. We performed a pan-cancer analysis of ACLY expression in six tumour types, bladder urothelial carcinoma (BLCA), breast invasive carcinoma (BRCA), kidney chromophobe (KICH), kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC), kidney renal papillary cell carcinoma (KIRP), and liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC), using public databases like TIMER, GEPIA, UALCAN, and cBioPortal. GEPIA and UALCAN were utilized for evaluating prognostic significance, and GEO datasets for external validation. ACLY was consistently overexpressed in reprogrammed cancers (BLCA, BRCA, KIRC, KIRP, and LIHC) (P