Princeton cancer researchers find that tumors’ metabolism is slower than suspected.

They hypothesized that it consumes a great deal of energy, churning through nutrients and putting healthy tissue — the heart, the liver, the pancreas — at a disadvantage as the metabolic system spreads the nutritive wealth. But in a new study, researchers from Princeton Chemistry and the Ludwig Princeton Branch demonstrate for the first time that the opposite is actually true: a tumor’s conversion of nutrients to usable cellular energy is markedly, quantifiably sluggish.