Cancer cell mitochondria are the powerhouse and Achilles heel of tumor growth and metastasis. Cancer cells consume more than 5 times the energy than normal cells. This is contradictory to Otto Warberg's Nobel Prize winning thesis that cancer cells produced only limited amounts of ATP by burning glucose (glycolysis). Apparently, Warberg was measuring the combined energy production of both cancer cells and their surrounding stromal cells. Warberg believed that cancer cells derived their energy from sugar, but it turns out that it is the mitochondria that is making ATP.
This effect may also explain why cancer patients lose weight as they get closer to dying. There are drugs such as Metformin and methyl jasmonate that can preferentially destroy mitochondria from cancer cells and leave normal mitochondria alone.