Expression of lipid transport-associated genes in lipid-deprived cancer cells.

Cancer cells are known to significantly alter their lipid profiles in response to changes in extracellular lipid availability. Recent studies have shown that in response to lipid deprivation, cancer cells display significant changes in their cellular lipid homeostasis. These changes have been linked to the modulation of de novo lipid synthesis pathways that are markedly altered under lipid-deprived growth conditions. However, the effects of such environment on intracellular lipid trafficking-that could also affect cellular lipid homeostasis-have not been widely investigated. The presented work studies the effect of lipid deprivation on expression of genes for lipid transport proteins (LTPs) in cancer cell lines.