Ralph J. DeBerardinis, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator ‘11-‘14) of UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, and colleagues, discovered a metabolic pathway unique to some tumors. The tumor-specific pathway is dependent on the amino acid glutamine and reverses many of the chemical reactions of the Krebs cycle, used by normal cells. This new finding could provide a new target for drugs that could specifically target cancer cells without harming healthy cells. The study was published in the scientific journal Nature.