Metabolism reprogramming are now considered to be characteristic of cancer cells and a consequence of their adaptations to a hostile microenvironment resulting in a decrease in oxygen concentration (hypoxia) and the availability of nutrients, particularly glucose and glutamine. Thus, cancer cells can adapt their metabolism to survive and proliferate. Recent advances in the knowledge of these modifications allow the emergence of new therapeutic approaches targeting these metabolic changes. One of the main regulators of cellular metabolism is the transcriptional coactivator PGC-1α (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha). PGC-1α controls mitochondrial biogenesis, oxidative phosphorylation and fatty acid oxidation. Recently, it has been shown that PGC-1α promotes mitochondrial biogenesis in cancer cells and dramatically increases their metastatic potential. On the contrary, it appears that overexpression of PGC-1α decreases the formation of metastases in melanoma and prostatic adenocarcinoma. However, the metabolic and molecular changes leading to the aggressiveness of prostate cancer are unclear. Oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes are known to be able to regulate the metabolic adaptations of cancer cells. Several studies show that the number of copies of the gene is increased in 30% of prostate cancers. Transgenic mice overexpressing c-MYC in the prostate develop prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia followed by prostatic adenocarcinoma. At the cellular level, c-MYC expression has been shown to stimulate glycolysis and glutaminolysis in tumor cells, by controlling the expression of genes involved in these metabolic pathways. In addition, c-MYC is also able to increase the polyamine synthesis pathway by inducing the expression of the limiting enzyme of this pathway, ornithine decarboxylase (ODC). In this context, the purpose of my thesis was to study the role of PGC-1α on the metabolism and aggressiveness of prostate cancer cells. During my thesis, we have shown that the decrease of PGC-1α expression increases the three fundamental characteristics of tumor aggressiveness: proliferation, migration and invasion. To determine the metabolic changes involved in this phenotype, we performed metabolic experiments and compared control cells to cells where PGC-1α expression is decreased. We show that the decrease of PGC-1α significantly increases the biosynthesis of polyamines. Polyamines are involved in many cellular functions, particularly in proliferation and cell migration. Thus, we inhibit the synthesis of polyamines with DFMO, an inhibitor ODC which is the rate limiting enzyme of this pathway. We have shown that pro-migratory and pro-invasive effects due to PGC-1α knockout are blocked by DFMO and ODC siRNA. Interestingly, the addition of exogenous polyamine partially restores the aggressiveness of the cells. Consistent with these results, we show that ODC is overexpressed when PGC-1α is decreased and that ODC expression is upregulated by the c-MYC oncogene. In addition, we observe that c-MYC expression increases in cells invalidated for PGC-1α and that the inhibition of c-MYC blocks the pro-migratory and pro-invasive effects due to the invalidation of PGC-1α. Therefore, c-MYC participates in the aggressive phenotype related to the increase of the polyamine biosynthesis pathway. These in vitro results were confirmed in vivo by micro-metastasis analysis, we demonstrate that shPGC-1α cells form more metastases and treatment with DFMO inhibits the formation of micro-metastases. Clinical data indicate that PGC-1α expression is decreased in patients with prostate cancer, and this decrease correlates with an increase in c-MYC and ODC. In conclusion, we show that PGC-1α is the major regulator of an onco-metabolic which promotes prostate cancer aggressiveness via the polyamine biosynthesis pathway.