A recent study from MD Anderson Cancer Center provides insight into the ways that cancer cells metastasize. Scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have found that cancer cells traveling to other sites have different needs from the cells that remain in place, which continue to proliferate from the original tumor site. The key to this difference may be the protein PGC-1a, which is crucial to the regulation of cellular metabolism. The research, conducted with clinical analysis of human invasive breast cancers, shows that the ability to identify the vulnerability of cancer cell metabolism could prove to be of therapeutic value in.  The study appeared in the September online issue of Nature Cell Biology.