Inositol phosphate recycling regulates glycolytic and lipid metabolism that drives cancer aggressiveness.

Cancer cells possess fundamentally altered metabolism that supports their pathogenic features, which includes a heightened reliance on aerobic glycolysis to provide precursors for synthesis of biomass. We show here that inositol polyphosphate phosphatase 1 (INPP1) is highly expressed in aggressive human cancer cells and primary high-grade human tumors. Inactivation of INPP1 leads to a reduction in glycolytic intermediates that feed into the synthesis of the oncogenic signaling lipid lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), which in turn impairs LPA signaling and further attenuates glycolytic metabolism in a feed-forward mechanism to impair cancer cell motility, invasiveness, and tumorigenicity. Taken together these findings reveal a novel mode of glycolytic control in cancer cells that can serve to promote key oncogenic lipid signaling pathways that drive cancer pathogenicity.