The Intersection of Lipid Signaling and Metabolism in Cancer and Tuberculosis

Lipids are an essential class of complex biomolecules involved in maintaining cellular energy homeostasis, structural organization and signal transduction. Dysregulated lipid signaling and metabolism have increasingly been reported in various pathological settings like diabetes, cardiomyopathy, neurological pathologies, malignancies and infectious diseases. Recent technological advances in metabolomics and lipidomics have shown enormous complexities and functionalities of lipids. The role of lipid metabolism in maintaining cancer heterogeneity and plasticity is an important hallmark in the disease progression, which is often associated with reduced drug efficacy and poor survival outcomes in patients. In the last decade different research groups have comprehensively shown using variety of cell lines and in vivo tumor models that cancer cells show higher dependency on fats, especially during stresses, like drug insults, oxidative damage, immune attack and metastasis. This metabolic shift helps metastasizing cells to extract ATP and NADPH via β-oxidation to curtail oxidative stress and create an immunosuppressive niche. Lipids play a crucial role in pathogenesis of various infectious diseases such as HIV, SARS-CoV-2, and influenza, and are indispensable in Mtb survival within the host. In this review, we explore the impact of altered lipidomics and dysregulated signaling in shielding cancer and tuberculosis from various internal and external stresses, as well as their potential as a novel therapeutic target for managing diseases.