Besides their role as energy substrates for many other metabolic pathways, myometabolites have received considerable attention due to their potential positive signaling roles in maintaining physical homeostasis and pathological progression, including exercise adaptation, body weight regulation (Hoffmann and Weigert, 2017), inflammation and immunological disease (Korotkova and Lundberg, 2014), insulin sensitivity and glucose homeostasis (Rai and Demontis, 2016), cancer and tumor formation (Yang et al., 2017), and cognitive function (Moon and van Praag, 2014). The gene discussed is INS; the disease is cancer.