SLC7A11 and cancer: Since both glucose and glutamate are important for TCA cycle anaplerosis and mitochondrial respiration, it was initially proposed that, because SLC7A11-mediated glutamate export decreases intracellular glutamate reserves, SLC7A11high cancer cells are forced to have more reliance on glucose to replenish the TCA cycle (presumably through glycolysis) and to maintain mitochondrial respiration, resulting in glucose dependency (Koppula et al., 2017; Shin et al., 2017).