Interpretation of metabolic flexibility in HCC We further discussed the contradiction between the above two aspects. Normal tissues utilize 90% of ATP produced by OXPHOS and 10% by glycolysis. On the contrary, tumors produce 50% of the ATP from OXPHOS and 50% from glycolysis (Warburg, 1956a). This is despite the fact that OXPHOS is reduced in tumour cells compared to normal cells. However, many tumours maintain a large amount of OXPHOS to produce large amounts of ATP.
