The avidity of cancer cells for glucose, mainly mediated by the upregulation of glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1; also known as SLC2A1), contributed to the development of fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET; Box 1) techniques for cancer detection and monitoring (Vander Heiden et al., 2009). This evidence concerns the gene SLC2A1 and cancer.