In addition to adjusting for different substrates, hypoxic cancer cells might also use FA uptake pathways to compensate for reduced glucose-based de novo FA synthesis.3,9,10 Hypoxia increases FA uptake in breast cancer, ovarian cancer and glioblastoma cells by inducing the expression of FA-binding proteins (FABP3, FABP7 or FABP4), which are involved in the uptake and subcellular trafficking of FAs10,11,42 (Fig. 1, Table 1). The gene discussed is FABP4; the disease is ovarian cancer.