REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1586973
This article is part of the Research TopicEffects of Lactic Acid and Lactylation on Epigenetic Modifications and Gene Expression in TumorView all articles
Lactate-induced lactylation: from basic research to clinical perspectives Authors
Provisionally accepted
- Second Affiliated Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Lactate was initially considered a metabolic waste product of glycolysis under hypoxic conditions until the emergence of the lactate shuttle hypothesis. The lactate shuttle hypothesis describes the role of lactate in the delivery of oxidative and gluconeogenic substrates as well as in cell signaling. Lactate is a key molecule that links cellular metabolism to the regulation of cellular activity. Lactate-induced lactylation was first identified and reported in Nature in 2019 by Zhang et al. Subsequently, many studies on lactylation have been reported. Widely distributed lactylation is involved in a myriad of pathological processes and participates in the development and progression of numerous diseases, offering promising potential for future disease treatments. We comprehensively reviewed and organized the existing literature, detailed the metabolic processes of lactate and lactylation, and summarized the existing research methods on lactylation, aiming to provide direction and convenience for future research in this field.Additionally, we summarized the role of lactylation in various pathophysiological processes and elucidated the relationship between lactate modification and various diseases, as well as the targets and drugs that regulate lactylation, which may enable future clinical interventions.
Keywords: lactylation, Lactate, Metabolic processes, Pathophysiological processes, Complex Diseases
Received: 11 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 shi, Zou, Jin, Wu and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bin Liu, Second Affiliated Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.