PHGDH and cancer: In the paper that follows, I review the historic progression of our understanding of the role of PHGDH in cancer from the classic work of Snell et al. [16–20] in the 1980s through its reemergence and rise to prominence in 2011 with near simultaneous publications by Possemato et al. [21] and Locasale et al. [8], culminating in an assessment of subsequent work and what it means for the future of PHGDH as a potential therapeutic target and putative metabolic oncogene.