Glucose Oxidase‐Related Cancer Therapies

Abstract Glucose oxidase (GOx), which catalyzes the conversion of glucose into gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) in the presence of oxygen (O 2 ), has aroused growing interest for cancer therapy. GOx can starve tumor cells to death by depleting glucose, which is very important for their energy supply, and the generated H 2 O 2 is can be used for oxidation therapy. In addition, GOx‐catalyzed glucose oxidation exerts a variety of effects on the tumor environment, such as enhancing hypoxia and increasing acidity. The full use of these characteristics can effectively reduce side effects and enhance the therapeutic efficiency of GOx‐related cancer therapies. As is generally acknowledged, it is difficult to completely eliminate tumors with a single treatment, whereas combining two or more therapies may yield super‐additive results because when properly designed, different treatments can compensate for the shortcomings of the other treatments and bring out the best in each other. In view of these facts, enhanced therapies and combination therapies related to glucose oxidation have been widely studied, and this review provides a systematic overview of recent research on GOx‐related cancer therapies (especially starvation therapy) from the perspective of glucose oxidation (including the reaction itself, oxygen, enzymes, gluconic acid, and H 2 O 2 ) and other combination therapies.